Definition of "black hole" [black• hole]

• An area of space-time with a gravitational field so intense that its escape velocity is equal to or exceeds the speed of light. (noun)
• A great void; an abyss: The government created a bureaucratic black hole that swallows up individual initiative. (noun)

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.

• "By the early autumn of 1981, Allen had some twenty different issues requiring full NSC attention that were languishing in the black hole that was Meeses inbox."
• "The Mayan shamans, for example, discovered the black hole at the center of the Milky Way, and their astronomers ascertained the precession of the equinoxes long before modern science did."
• "When, say, she discovers in Sixteen Candles that a seemingly sweet geek has charged admission for boys to view her pink-polka-dotted panties, she makes her full-lipped mouth a black hole of sheerest teen horror."