the.com/hollowness
the void that makes bells ring, flutes sing, and bones light enough to fly.
means The quality of being empty inside, whether literally as a cavity or figuratively as an absence of feeling, substance, or meaning.
from From Old English 'holh,' a hollow or hole — a noun that became the adjective 'hollow' (the empty space within a tree, a bone, a chest). Pile on the suffix '-ness,' which Old English used to spin adjectives into states-of-being, and you get the abstract condition: not just empty, but emptiness itself. The root likely shares a family tree with words for caves and concavity, the kind of dark interior space that echoes.
- bird flight
- Hollow bones let birds defy gravity daily
- sound source
- Empty space inside instruments creates their resonance
- engineering
- Hollow tubes resist bending better than solid rods
- strongest shape
- Hollow bamboo survives storms that snap oaks
- emotional weight
- Felt emptiness can outweigh any physical pain
the great moon hoax — 1835 new york sun fabrication claiming the moon was hollow and inhabited
pellucidar — edgar rice burroughs' 1915 novel depicting a hollow earth with an interior sun