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

While many organizations do a decent job managing the resilience of their own systems, there is a black hole with regard to the impact that can be felt when vendors in their supply chain lack resilience or experience cyber issues. —Jeffrey Wheatman, Forbes, 23 Dec. 2024

This indicated not only a black hole lurking at the center of this galaxy but that object was bizarrely rotated at a 90-degree angle to NGC 5084. —Robert Lea, Space.com, 20 Dec. 2024

So mixing in a player who's shown flashes of upside but just hasn't gotten the right opportunity with a black hole organization such as the Jets could be a recipe for another futile experiment. —Benedict Cosgrove, Newsweek, 20 Dec. 2024

Black Hole Finder– Discover brand new baby black holes by analyzing gravitational wave events. —Bob Hirshon, Discover Magazine, 20 Dec. 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