cavern

noun cav·ern \ ˈka-vərn also -vrən \

|Updated on: 14 Aug 2018

Examples: cavern in a Sentence

Definition of cavern

: cave; especially : one of large or indefinite extent

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Examples of cavern in a Sentence

a cavern with beautiful stalactites

Recent Examples of cavern from the Web

Then, on Tuesday, shortly after the group inside the deepest cavern had been pulled to safety, a piece of equipment that drained water to levels that made the escape manageable broke.

— jake maxwell watts, WSJ, "The Thai Cave Rescue, Before Its Triumph, Teetered on the Brink of Disaster," 11 July 2018
Meanwhile, oxygen is starting to run low in the remote cavern where the children have taken refuge.

— richard c. paddock, BostonGlobe.com, "Thai cave rescue will be a murky, desperate ordeal, divers say," 6 July 2018
Drilling teams dug more than 100 pilot holes but were unable to locate the cavern.

— jake maxwell watts, WSJ, "The Thai Cave Rescue, Before Its Triumph, Teetered on the Brink of Disaster," 11 July 2018
The Thai navy SEALs — along with the international team of divers who traveled to Mae Sai, the town nearest the cavern, to help — have quickly become immortalized as modern-day superheroes in various pieces of artwork.

— rebecca tan, Washington Post, "‘Hooyah, Hooyah, Hooyah’: Jubilation at Thai cave rescue spreads across the world," 10 July 2018
While a sign outside the Tham Luang Cave warns that monsoon downpours can transform internal passageways into powerful rivers within a few hours, the boys had explored its caverns before.

— hannah beech, The Seattle Times, "For some Thai soccer-team members, cave ordeal was only their latest test," 10 July 2018
The divers, three Navy SEALS, and a doctor, brought the boys up from the perilous depths two at a time, working through the cavern's narrows turns and murky water with precision.

— david grossman, Popular Mechanics, "All 12 Thai Boys Rescued From Cave," 10 July 2018
The rescue effort would likely involve scuba-diving them out of the waterlogged cavern where they have been stranded, a diver at the scene said Saturday, but details of any operation Sunday remained unclear.

— NBC News, "Thai officials clear media from cave site, rescue attempt for trapped boys could be imminent," 8 July 2018
The team had known a light rain was in the forecast prior to entering La Grieta, one of the many distinct caverns connected to the greater Huautla system.

— joshua hydeman, National Geographic, "One of the Deepest Caves in the World is Even Bigger Than We Thought," 7 June 2018

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'cavern.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Origin and Etymology of cavern

Middle English caverne, borrowed from Anglo-French, borrowed from Latin caverna "hollow space, crevice, tree hole, cave," from cavus "hollow, sunken" + -erna, noun-forming suffix of uncertain origin — more at ¹hole

NEW! Time Traveler

First Known Use: 14th century

in the meaning defined above

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cavern Synonyms

Synonyms

cave, grot, grotto;

Related Words

abyss, chasm, gulf, hollow;

crawlway, gallery, subway, tunnel;

excavation, mine, pit, shaft, well;

bunker, dugout, foxhole;

burrow, covert, den, hole, lair, lodge, shelter;

cavern

verb

Definition of cavern

caverned; caverning; caverns

transitive verb

1 : to place in or as if in a cavern

2 : to form a cavern of : hollow —used with out

Recent Examples of cavern from the Web

In the hunt, scientists have erected detectors in a South Dakota cavern a mile underground, at the bottom of Lake Baikal in Siberia, under a mountain in Japan, and on the floor of the Mediterranean Sea.

— robert lee hotz, WSJ, "Scientists Track Neutrinos Through Ice to Their Source in the Cosmos," 12 July 2018