Sekirov Dictionary

black hole

UK /blæk ˈhəʊl/US /blæk ˈhoʊl/

noun 6
verb 1
forms 6

noun6

•
A region of spacetime that exerts a gravitational pull strong enough that no matter or energy, not even light, can escape it.
- Astronomers have captured the first image of a black hole, heralding a revolution in our understanding of the universe’s most enigmatic objects. — 2019
A bit bucket; a place of permanent oblivion for data.
•
(figurative) A void into which things disappear for good; an inscrutable area or subject.
- I finished some client work and gave myself 30 minutes to fall down one of my favorite internet black holes: genealogical research. Four hours plus some later, my eyes were burning in my head — 2004
•
[before a noun] (Internet) A place where incoming traffic is silently discarded.
- One way of fighting spam is to use a blackhole list maintained on a blackhole server.
A dangerous optical illusion that can occur on a nighttime approach with dark, featureless terrain between the aircraft and a brightly-lit runway, where the aircraft appears to the pilots to be higher up than it actually is, potentially triggering a premature or overly-steep descent and a crash short of the runway.
•
A place of punitive confinement; a lockup or cell; a military guardroom.
- A discipline of unlimited autocracy, upheld by rods, and ferules, and the black hole. — 1860

verb1

•
(Internet) To redirect (network traffic, etc.) nowhere; to discard (incoming traffic).
- Select a nonglobally routed prefix, such as the Test-Net (RFC 3330) 192.0.2.0/24, to use as the next hop of any attacked prefix to be blackholed. — 2005

forms

black holed · black-holed · black holing · black-holing · black holes · black-holes

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