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Definition of "crater" []

  • A bowl-shaped depression at the mouth of a volcano or geyser. (noun)
  • A bowl-shaped depression in a surface made by an explosion or the impact of a body, such as a meteoroid. (noun)
  • A pit; a hollow. (noun)
  • Variant of krater. (noun)
  • To make craters in: "The missiles did not . . . crater the airfield” ( Tom Clancy). (verb-transitive)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Use "crater" in a sentence
  • "But isn't there a part of you that wishes that the shiny bottom of the crater is actually the exposed hull of the planet-sized interstellar spacecraft that has been waiting inside it's rocky camouflage for millions of years for intelligent life to discover and re-activate it?"
  • "If, however, it does break through, the newly-opened terrestrial stream generally flows in such a quiet and well-defined course, that the deep valley, which we term the crater, remains accessible"
  • "The crater from the Ranger impact is not well defined in the existing film database, especially as it appears at the boundary between two framelets."