caldera
Americannoun
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of caldera
1860–65; < Spanish Caldera, name of a crater on Canary Islands, literally, cauldron < Late Latin caldāria, noun use of feminine of caldārius of warming; see caldarium
Explanation
A caldera is a crater formed after the eruption of a volcano. The caldera is formed when the volcano collapses into itself. Volcanoes are impressive forces of nature with the power to wreak enormous destruction when they erupt. One sign of that power is a caldera, which is a crater formed after a volcano has erupted and collapsed into itself. Some of the more ancient calderas formed mountains and valleys in the Rockies and elsewhere. A related word in English is cauldron, whose modern meaning (a vessel for hot liquids) can remind us of the molten lava of a volcano.
Vocabulary lists containing caldera
The Blood of Olympus
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Cosmos
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A Short History of Nearly Everything
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Poços de Caldas, a city built in the caldera of an extinct volcano, has become one of the centers of the rush.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 9, 2026
Lake Taupō, from which the town takes its name, is a large caldera, a volcano that has collapsed in on itself.
From BBC ● May 20, 2025
Erebus is only a 20-minute helicopter ride from McMurdo, so since the 1960s scientists have studied the volcano and the lava lake that roils within its caldera, occasionally tossing out “bombs” of molten rock.
From Science Magazine ● Dec. 2, 2024
The area surrounding the caldera has been closed to the public since 2008 because of other hazards, including ground cracking, instability in the crater wall and rockfalls.
From Seattle Times ● Jun. 3, 2024
I was oily and puffy from thirty-two hours of flying, and I still had the caldera of the solar system’s largest volcano smoldering between my eyebrows.
From "Darius the Great Is Not Okay" by Adib Khorram
The proposed magma re-injection model aligns with observations of large, shallow magma systems beneath other major calderas such as Yellowstone and Toba.
From Science Daily ● Mar. 29, 2026
Earth MRI has already shown that lithium prospectors need not stick to calderas.
From Science Magazine ● Jun. 1, 2023
The couple responsible for the film’s entrancing reels of explosions and rivers of molten rock — collected over decades of expeditions to active calderas around the globe — are French volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 13, 2022
The valley was wide and flat, pocked with gaping calderas that blew enormous plumes of steam into the air, like sideways clouds drifting into the sky.
From New York Times ● Mar. 3, 2020
During the night we approached Palma, another large island of the Canary group, containing one of the most remarkable calderas, or large basins, formed by volcanic action in the world.
From A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' Our Home on the Ocean for Eleven Months by Brassey, Annie
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
