cavern

From Middle English caverne, borrowing from Old French caverne, from Latin caverna (“hollow, cavity, cave”), from cavus (“hollow, excavated, concave”).

• (Received Pronunciation) enPR: kăv'ən, IPA^(key): /ˈkav.ən/, /ˈkav.n̩/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• (General American) enPR: kăv'ərn, IPA^(key): /ˈkæv.ɚn/, /ˈkæv.ɹən/
• Rhymes: -ævə(ɹ)n

cavern (plural caverns)

1. A large cave.
2. An underground chamber.
   • 1797, S[amuel] T[aylor] Coleridge, “Kubla Khan: Or A Vision in a Dream”, in Christabel: Kubla Khan, a Vision: The Pains of Sleep, London: […] John Murray, […], by William Bulmer and Co. […], published 1816, →OCLC, page 55:

     In Xanadu did Kubla Khan / A stately pleasure-dome decree: / Where Alph, the sacred river, ran / Through caverns measureless to man / Down to a sunless sea.

3. A large, dark place or space.

   a dark cavern of a shop

cavern (third-person singular simple present caverns, present participle caverning, simple past and past participle caverned)

1. (transitive) To form a cavern or deep depression in.

   Synonym: hollow

   catacombs caverning the hillsides

2. (transitive) To put into a cavern.

• “cavern”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
• “cavern”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.

• Craven, carven, craven