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

American Expansion For much of its history, the American market has been a black hole for F1. —Justin Birnbaum, Sportico.com, 7 Mar. 2026

In these cases, scientists think the extreme characteristics of the black holes involved in these mergers are the result of prior collisions, providing evidence of merger chains that explain how some black holes grow to masses billions of times that of the sun. —Robert Lea, Space.com, 6 Mar. 2026

Quantum black holes could be just out of reach of our current energy frontier. —Big Think, 5 Mar. 2026

At its very core is Sagittarius A*, a supermassive black hole roughly 4 million times more massive than our sun. —Asuka Koda, CNN Money, 5 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