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

These instruments detected spacetime ripples produced when two black holes spiraled together and merged. —Rupendra Brahambhatt, Interesting Engineering, 14 Mar. 2026

Stars will go dark, stellar remnants will fade away, and even black holes will evaporate. —Big Think, 13 Mar. 2026

For example, when two galaxies collide, their black holes can fall toward each other and eventually merge. —Phil Plait, Scientific American, 13 Mar. 2026

Afterward, the Wolf-Rayet star, with a lifetime of only a few million years, would most likely have collapsed into a black hole, although evidence for this would be long gone, Dwarkadas said. —James Dinneen, Quanta Magazine, 2 Mar. 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