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 of black hole

• emptiness
• vacancy
• void
• blank

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

Though the star is stripping and accreting matter like black holes sometimes do with stars, the huge difference in size between the star in ZTF J0440+2325 and a typical black hole means this proceeds differently. — Robert Lea, Space.com, 8 Oct. 2026

Some of the most cataclysmic events in the cosmos, such as mergers of supermassive black holes, should produce a very specific gravitational wave signature, according to general relativity. — Stephen Clark, ArsTechnica, 7 Oct. 2026

The Nobel committee said IceCube would take neutrino astronomy to a new level, providing information about cosmic phenomena that are hidden behind dust clouds and distant space objects such as black holes. — Katie Hunt, CNN Money, 6 Oct. 2026

One high-energy neutrino came from a blazar – a supermassive black hole sucking in matter from its host galaxy and spewing some of it into a jet thousands of light-years long and pointed straight at Earth. — Tyce Deyoung, The Conversation, 6 Oct. 2026

Word History

First Known Use

1963, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Rhymes for black hole

• bankroll
• bedroll
• borehole
• cajole
• catchpole
• charcoal
• condole
• control
• dipole
• downhole
• enroll
• extol

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