cavern

/'kævən/

Thân thiện

A family explores a vast cavern with flashlights.

Definition

1. Noun:

   • A large cave or a large chamber within a cave: A cavern is a naturally formed underground space, typically much larger than a simple cave.
   • Any large, dark, enclosed space: This meaning extends the word metaphorically to describe any vast, hollow, and often dark interior.

2. Verb:

   • To hollow out as if making a cavern: To excavate or create a large, hollow space within something.

Examples of Usage

• Noun:

  • The explorers used headlamps to illuminate the vast cavern.
  • The abandoned subway station felt like a dark, echoing cavern.

• Verb:

  • Years of erosion had caverned out the soft rock beneath the cliff.
  • The disease can cavern the lung tissue, creating hollow spaces.

Advanced Usage

• "cavern out": To form or create by hollowing. This is a more specific use of the verb form.
  • The river had caverned out a passage through the limestone over millennia.

Variants and Related Words

• Cavernous (adj): Resembling a cavern in size, darkness, or hollowness.
  • The old warehouse had a cavernous interior.

Synonyms

• Grotto: A small, picturesque cave.
• Abyss: A deep or seemingly bottomless chasm (often used metaphorically for a vast space or a profound difference).
• Chasm: A deep fissure in the earth's surface.

Related Phrases

• Cavern of ice: A poetic phrase describing a large, ice-filled cave or hollow.
  • The glacier revealed a stunning cavern of ice.

Related Idioms

• Eyes like caverns: An idiom describing eyes that appear deeply sunken, dark, or hollow, often due to exhaustion, illness, or intense emotion.
  • After days without sleep, his eyes were like dark caverns.

Học thuật

Noun

1. a large cave or a large chamber in a cave
2. any large dark enclosed space
   • his eyes were dark caverns

Verb

1. hollow out as if making a cavern

Từ đồng nghĩa

• cavern out