Waterhole

noun, slang

noun, slang ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A depression in which water collects, especially one where wild animals come to drink.

    "From habit the sheep would head for the river, but, though it was early spring, the winter had been droughty, and the river was only a string of dangerous water-holes."

  2. 2
    A watering hole; a place where people meet to drink and talk. informal
  3. 3
    A part of the electromagnetic spectrum, between the regions where hydrogen and hydroxyl radiate, that is relatively quiet in terms of radio astronomy.

Synonyms

All synonyms
watering holewatering hole

Example

More examples

"The giraffes were looking for a waterhole."

Etymology

* water + hole. * (astronomy): Coined by Bernard Oliver in 1971, in allusion to the idea that this part of the spectrum would be that used by extraterrestrial intelligence to communicate.

Related phrases

Freemans Waterholeelectromagnetic spectrumradio astronomywild animal

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.