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# pigeonhole

«pigeonhole» in Mova's school dictionary: **noun: One of a set of small open boxes in a wall or desk…** — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples.

### part of speech

noun (a pigeonhole, pigeonholes); verb (pigeonhole, pigeonholes, pigeonholed, pigeonholing)

### meaning for a pupil

1) noun: One of a set of small open boxes in a wall or desk where letters and papers are put for each person. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/P/pigeonhole/#m1)

2) verb: To decide too quickly that someone or something belongs to one simple type, unfairly: "Don't pigeonhole people." [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/P/pigeonhole/#m2)

3) verb: To put something aside and ignore it (old use). [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/P/pigeonhole/#m3)

### sense in the lessons

In schools and offices, teachers have pigeonholes in the staff room for letters. In discussions about fairness, pigeonholing people means putting them in a box, like "girls are bad at maths", which is unfair. Similar: label, stereotype.

### examples

- Leave the note in Mr Jones's pigeonhole. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/P/pigeonhole/#x1)
- Each teacher has a pigeonhole in the staff room. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/P/pigeonhole/#x2)
- Don't pigeonhole him as just a footballer; he loves poetry too. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/P/pigeonhole/#x3)
- She hated being pigeonholed as the shy one. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/P/pigeonhole/#x4)
- The letters were sorted into pigeonholes. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/P/pigeonhole/#x5)
- Pigeons once lived in holes like these in dovecotes. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/P/pigeonhole/#x6)

### note

One word (sometimes "pigeon-hole"). Regular verb. Spelling: pigeon has "eo" (pi-geon).

### Trees and pragmatics

[Every meaning and example of «pigeonhole» parsed by Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/P/pigeonhole/), each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.