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Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
sinkhole

also sink-hole, mid-15c., "sewage pit," from sink (n.) + hole (n.). As a geological phenomenon, "hole made in the earth in limestone regions by underground erosion," 1780, from sink (v.).

Wiktionary
sinkhole

alt. 1 (context geology English) A hole formed in soluble rock by the action of water, serving to conduct surface water to an underground passage 2 A depressed area in which waste or drainage collects. 3 (context pinball English) A hole in the playfield that rewards the player when the ball is guided into it. 4 (context internet English) A DNS server that has been configured to hand out non-routeable addresses for all domains, so that every computer that uses it will fail to get access to the real website. n. 1 (context geology English) A hole formed in soluble rock by the action of water, serving to conduct surface water to an underground passage 2 A depressed area in which waste or drainage collects. 3 (context pinball English) A hole in the playfield that rewards the player when the ball is guided into it. 4 (context internet English) A DNS server that has been configured to hand out non-routeable addresses for all domains, so that every computer that uses it will fail to get access to the real website.

WordNet
sinkhole

n. a depression in the ground communicating with a subterranean passage (especially in limestone) and formed by solution or by collapse of a cavern roof [syn: sink, swallow hole]

Wikipedia
Sinkhole

A sinkhole, also known as a cenote, sink, sink-hole, shakehole, swallet, swallow hole, or doline (the different terms for sinkholes are often used interchangeably), is a depression or hole in the ground caused by some form of collapse of the surface layer. Some are caused by karst processes—for example, the chemical dissolution of carbonate rocks or suffosion processes. Sinkholes vary in size from both in diameter and depth, and vary in form from soil-lined bowls to bedrock-edged chasms. Sinkholes may form gradually or suddenly, and are found worldwide.

Sinkhole (disambiguation)

A sinkhole is a hole caused by a collapse in soil.

It can also refer to:

  • Battle of the Sink Hole, a battle in the War of 1812
  • Drain (plumbing), a hole in a sink for draining
  • DNS sinkhole, a DNS server that points a domain to bogus internet addresses

Usage examples of "sinkhole".

The TV reporters went over to Chairperson Danza to discuss going up to the Painted Cave sinkhole and taking videos.

Sinkholes in the whole mythology of progress gape open up and down the street, suck down entire retail strips at a shot.

And now the fates and friendship had brought him to this sinkhole in the Yucatecan woodland to die at the hands of a madman-a very quick and able madman.

Like Hooper, Fisher was reminded of the emptiness of O-Zone, the great spidery wilderness of hickories and oaks, the sinkholes and swellings of the plateau, and the distant glimpse of prairie.

Hiaasen again had occasion to write about Lennar Homes, when sinkholes full of trash opened up behind houses in a Miramar subdivision the company had built.

These sinkholes, Fisher said, were caused by the collapse of the limestone caverns that were so numerous in O-Zone.

Like sinkholes, which is where the upper levels of the earth slowly-or sometimes quickly-settle into the cavity the mines left far down below.

He could even see plumes of mist, the exhaled breath of hidden caves, rising straight and calm from the splintered landscape of karst and sinkholes below him.

She had shown the advance party what the sinkholes and quicksand looked like, and so far they had avoided serious mishap.

The residents of Hampshire Homes in Miramar already have watched as 260 truckloads of tires and trash were hauled out of the infamous sinkhole that opened up there.

They stopped by the basketlike grove of trees and bushes to pick up their remaining equipment and then hurried down the slope to the sinkhole.

It seemed an odd type of holiday option to me, the idea of sleeping in a tin box in a lonesome field miles from anywhere in a climate like Britain's and emerging each morning with hundreds of other people from identical tin boxes, crossing the rail line and dual carriageway and hiking over a desert of sinkholes in order to dip your toes in a distant sea full of Liverpool turds.

From the bow, Giordino could look down into the remarkably transparent water that had turned from the cobalt blue of the sinkhole to a deep aqua green and see startled albino salamanders and small schools of blind cave fish darting amid the spherical boulders that carpeted the river bottom like fallen ornaments.

He slipped and lurched and sloshed ahead and sank once -- panic crawling down his back -- in a sinkhole to his waist, and went on again, hacking at the cane and cotton grass with the knife.

Wedge-shaped spaces under stairs, sewers blocked with ice, collapsed watch towers with makeshift roofs of elkhide, disused roast pits, abandoned outhouses and dry wells, burrows dug into the great mounds of snow that built up along the city's south wall, and cracks in the very city itself, leading downward to vaults of precision-cut stone and warrens of crawl spaces, underspaces, and sinkholes: Ash had seen people slip into them all.