From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishvolevole /vəʊl $ voʊl/ noun [countable] HBAa small animal like a mouse with a short tail that lives in fields and woods and near rivers
Examples from the Corpus
vole• Visitors also can see coyotes, chipmunks, raccoons, marmots and vole.• Cats, too, are sensitive to ultrasonic frequencies and can hear mice and voles in hidden places.• These excursions in the dark were like a door to another world-the secret world of mice and shrews and moles and voles.• The tundra is widely grazed by mammals, especially voles and lemmings that burrow in the undergrowth.• Male meadow voles have bigger hippocampi than females and are better at finding and remembering their way through mazes.• Barn owls' favourite prey are short-tailed voles, which live in hedgerows along the sides of roads.• Of the vole molars, 2 out of 18 split longitudinally, 12 disappeared without trace, and only 4 were left intact.Origin vole (1800-1900) Norwegian voll mus “field mouse” 