a cramped or squalid room or building

a rathole where a friend lived until her place was broken into for the seventeenth time

used to refer to the waste of money or resources

pouring our assets down the rathole of military expenditure

(in the oil industry) a shallow hole drilled near a well to accommodate the drill string joint when not in use

hide (money or goods), typically as part of a deception

he had ratholed the nine thousand that nobody could find