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kettle hole

American  

noun

Geology.

  1. a deep, kettle-shaped depression in glacial drift.

  2. pothole.

kettle hole British  

noun

  1. Often shortened to: kettle.  a round hollow formed by the melting of a mass of buried ice

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Etymology

Origin of kettle hole

First recorded in 1880–85

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.

We discovered a hilltop recently cleared of trees with a unique kettle hole atop it that we called The Volcano.

From Golf Digest • May 22, 2017

The pond, which is over 30 metres deep, is actually a kettle hole, a deep depression left behind when a chunk of ice was dropped by a retreating glacier around 15,000 years ago.

From The Guardian • May 26, 2015

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.