black hole

• POS: Noun Phrase

CIDE DICTIONARY

black hole,  

•  A dungeon or dark cell in a prison; a military lock-up or guardroom; -- now commonly with allusion to the cell (the Black Hole) in a fort at Calcutta (called the Black Hole of Calcutta), into which 146 English prisoners were thrust by the nabob Suraja Dowla on the night of June 20, 1765, and in which 123 of the prisoners died before morning from lack of air.  [1913 Webster]

  "A discipline of unlimited autocracy, upheld by rods, and ferules, and the black hole."  [1913 Webster]
•  An astronomical object whose mass is so condensed that the gravitational force does not allow anything, even light, to escape from its outer limit (the event horizon). The existence of such objects was first proposed from theoretical considerations. Because light cannot escape from such objects, they have not yet been detected with certainty (1998), but several "candidates" have been observed whose properties strongly suggest that they are black holes. Some theorists suggest that the centers of many galaxies may have large black holes at their cores. See also escape velocity.  [PJC]
•  a place into which things may enter, but can never emerge.  [PJC]

THESAURUS

black hole

Beehive, Cepheid variable, Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, Hyades, Messier catalog, NGC, POW camp, Pleiades, Seven Sisters, absolute magnitude, bastille, binary star, borstal, borstal institution, bridewell, brig, cell, concentration camp, condemned cell, death cell, death house, death row, detention camp, double star, dwarf star, federal prison, fixed star, forced-labor camp, gaol, giant star, globular cluster, gravity star, guardhouse, house of correction, house of detention, industrial school, internment camp, jail, jailhouse, keep, labor camp, lockup, magnitude, main sequence star, mass-luminosity law, maximum-security prison, minimum-security prison, neutron star, nova, open cluster, oubliette, pen, penal colony, penal institution, penal settlement, penitentiary, populations, prison, prison camp, prisonhouse, pulsar, quasar, quasi-stellar radio source, radio star, red giant star, reform school, reformatory, relative magnitude, sky atlas, spectrum-luminosity diagram, sponging house, star, star catalog, star chart, star cloud, star cluster, state prison, stellar magnitude, stockade, supernova, the hole, tollbooth, training school, variable star, white dwarf star

ROGET THESAURUS

black hole

Prison

N prison, prison house, jail, gaol, cage, coop, den, cell, stronghold, fortress, keep, donjon, dungeon, Bastille, oubliette, bridewell, house of correction, hulks, tollbooth, panopticon, penitentiary, guardroom, lockup, hold, round house, watch house, station house, sponging house, station, house of detention, black hole, pen, fold, pound, inclosure, isolation (exclusion), penal settlement, penal colony, bilboes, stocks, limbo, quod, calaboose, chauki, choky, thana, workhouse, Newgate, Fleet, Marshalsea, King's Bench, Queen's Bench, bond, bandage, irons, pinion, gyve, fetter, shackle, trammel, manacle, handcuff, straight jacket, strait jacket, strait-jacket, strait-waistcoat, hopples, vice, vise, yoke, collar, halter, harness, muzzle, gag, bit, brake, curb, snaffle, bridle, rein, reins, bearing rein, martingale, leading string, tether, picket, band, guy, chain, cord, cavesson, hackamore, headstall, jaquima, lines, ribbons, bolt, deadbolt, bar, lock, police lock, combination lock, padlock, rail, wall, stone wall, paling, palisade, fence, picket fence, barbed wire fence, Cyclone fence, stockade fence, chain-link fence, barrier, barricade, drag.

Darkness

N darkness, absence of light, blackness, obscurity, gloom, murk, dusk, Cimmerian darkness, Stygian darkness, Egyptian darkness, night, midnight, dead of night, witching hour of night, witching time of night, blind man's holiday, darkness visible, darkness that can be felt, palpable obscure, Erebus, the jaws of darkness, sablevested night, shade, shadow, umbra, penumbra, sciagraphy, obscuration, occultation, adumbration, obumbration, obtenebration, offuscation, caligation, extinction, eclipse, total eclipse, gathering of the clouds, shading, distribution of shade, chiaroscuro, noctivagation, black body, hohlraum, black hole, dark star, dark matter, cold dark matter, dark, darksome, darkling, obscure, tenebrious, sombrous, pitch dark, pitchy, pitch black, caliginous, black, sunless, lightless &c (sun) (light), somber, dusky, unilluminated &c (illuminate), nocturnal, dingy, lurid, gloomy, murky, murksome, shady, umbrageous, overcast, cloudy, darkened, dark as pitch, dark as a pit, dark as Erebus, benighted, noctivagant, noctivagous, in the dark, in the shade, brief as the lightning in the collied night, eldest Night and Chaos, ancestors of Nature, the blackness of the noonday night, the prayer of Ajax was for light.