black hole

noun

1

: a celestial object that has a gravitational field so strong that light cannot escape it and that is believed to be created especially in the collapse of a very massive star

2

: something resembling a black hole: such as

a

: something that consumes a resource continually

a financial black hole

b

: an empty space : void

… the archives of the past few years are a black hole.

—David Herman

c

: a dark and seemingly inescapable state or situation

the black hole of depression

Synonyms

• blank
• blankness
• emptiness
• vacancy
• vacuity
• void

Examples of black hole in a Sentence

discovered that there was a black hole in the library's collection with regard to her topic

Recent Examples on the Web

Cold dark matter wouldn’t interact with anything except via gravity, so the gravitational influence of the black holes should kick it out of the vicinity well before the black holes reach the final parsec. —Jonathan O’Callaghan, WIRED, 1 Dec. 2024

Eminem’s sequence was similar to the game’s mecha-monster battle from back in 2019, while during Juice WRLD’s songs players were turned into the glowing butterflies that first appeared in Fortnite’s ambitious black hole event from the same year. —Andrew Webster, The Verge, 30 Nov. 2024

While the demand for ever bigger TVs is mostly a very good thing so far as I’m concerned, the one downside is the way those cinematic screens turn into massive black holes in your room decor when they’re turned off. —John Archer, Forbes, 30 Nov. 2024

Some are translucent spheres that are eerily silent, seemingly sucking in all the noise around them, ready to engulf all who would wander near them, like a black hole. —Issy Van Der Velde, Rolling Stone, 20 Nov. 2024

Word History

First Known Use

1964, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Kids Definition

black hole

noun

: an invisible region believed to exist in space having a very strong gravitational field and thought to be caused by the collapse of a star