caldera

American  

[kal-der-uh, kawl-] / kælˈdɛr ə, kɔl- /

noun

calderas plural

1. a large, basinlike depression resulting from the explosion or collapse of the center of a volcano.

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caldera British  

/ kælˈdɛərə, ˈkɔːldərə /

noun

1. a large basin-shaped crater at the top of a volcano, formed by the collapse or explosion of the cone See cirque

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caldera Scientific  

/ kăl-dâr′ə,-dîr′ə,käl- /

1. A large, roughly circular crater left after a volcanic explosion or the collapse of a volcanic cone. Calderas are typically much wider in diameter than the openings of the vents from which they were formed.

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• calderas
  plural

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.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

caldera calderas

The Yellowstone caldera in the western United States is one of the world's best-known supervolcanoes.

From Science Daily ● Jun. 28, 2026

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

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

But more modest levels of internal heating have given the moon a subsurface ocean and an icy crust rather than lava-spewing calderas.

From Scientific American ● Apr. 24, 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

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

Related Words

• hole
• mouth
• pit