cubbyhole

[kuhb-ee-hohl] /ˈkʌb iˌhoʊl/

noun

pigeonhole.

a small, snug place.

Origin

1835-45; cubby + hole

Examples from the web for cubbyhole

The team suspected that appellant was hiding in a cubbyhole upstairs.
He was arrested after officers talked him into coming down from a ceiling cubbyhole in which he was hiding.
The cubbyhole nature of large organizations created places where people holed up and worked individually.
For that, there's a cubbyhole that allows a designated engineer to go under and fix it.
What strikes me is how similar the idea behind this is to the cubbyhole in the first slide.
He cast a wide swath from a cubbyhole crammed with audio tapes which he used for research for radio broadcasts.
Each worker checked his cubbyhole at the end of the work day for a piece of paper that had been placed there by a manager.

British Dictionary definitions for cubbyhole

cubbyhole

/ˈkʌbɪˌhəʊl/

noun

a small enclosed space or room

any small compartment, such as a pigeonhole

Often shortened to cubby (ˈkʌbɪ)

Word Origin

C19: from dialect cub cattle pen; see cove1

Word Origin and History for cubbyhole

1825, the first element possibly from a diminutive of cub "stall, pen, cattle shed, coop, hutch" (1540s), a dialect word with apparent cognates in Low German (e.g. East Frisian kubbing, Dutch kub). Or related to cuddy "small room, cupboard" (1793), originally "small cabin in a boat" (1650s), from Dutch kajuit, from French cahute. Or perhaps simply a children's made-up word.