CAVE IN

Pronunciation (US):

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does cave in mean? 

• CAVE IN (noun)
  The noun CAVE IN has 1 sense:

1. the sudden collapse of something into a hollow beneath it

  Familiarity information: CAVE IN used as a noun is very rare.

• CAVE IN (verb)
  The verb CAVE IN has 1 sense:

1. break down, literally or metaphorically

  Familiarity information: CAVE IN used as a verb is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• CAVE IN (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The sudden collapse of something into a hollow beneath it

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural events

Synonyms:

cave in; subsidence

Hypernyms ("cave in" is a kind of...):

collapse (a natural event caused by something suddenly falling down or caving in)

Derivation:

cave in (break down, literally or metaphorically)

• CAVE IN (verb)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Break down, literally or metaphorically

Classified under:

Verbs of walking, flying, swimming

Synonyms:

break; cave in; collapse; fall in; founder; give; give way

Context example:

The roof finally gave under the weight of the ice

Hypernyms (to "cave in" is one way to...):

change (undergo a change; become different in essence; losing one's or its original nature)

Verb group:

abandon; give up (stop maintaining or insisting on; of ideas or claims)

burst; collapse (cause to burst)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "cave in"):

go off; implode (burst inward)

buckle; crumple (fold or collapse)

flop (fall loosely)

break (curl over and fall apart in surf or foam, of waves)

sink; slide down; slump (fall or sink heavily)

Sentence frames:

Something ----s
Somebody ----s

Derivation:

cave in (the sudden collapse of something into a hollow beneath it)

 Context examples 

Stalagmites in a remote cave in northeast India hold climate secrets that can help predict rainfall patterns, floods and droughts in the sub-continent.

(Cave stalagmites reveal India’s rainfall secrets, SciDev.Net)

Ice cores drilled from a glacier in a cave in Transylvania offer new evidence of how Europe's winter weather and climate patterns fluctuated during the last 10,000 years, known as the Holocene period.

(Ice cave in Transylvania yields window into region's past, NSF)

He felt a vacancy in him, a need for the hush and quietude of the stream and the cave in the cliff.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

"A gloomy wood," according to the one playbill, was represented by a few shrubs in pots, green baize on the floor, and a cave in the distance.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

Yes, he replied, absolutely sans mademoiselle; for I am to take mademoiselle to the moon, and there I shall seek a cave in one of the white valleys among the volcano-tops, and mademoiselle shall live with me there, and only me.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

The room was most dear to her, and she would not have changed its furniture for the handsomest in the house, though what had been originally plain had suffered all the ill-usage of children; and its greatest elegancies and ornaments were a faded footstool of Julia's work, too ill done for the drawing-room, three transparencies, made in a rage for transparencies, for the three lower panes of one window, where Tintern Abbey held its station between a cave in Italy and a moonlight lake in Cumberland, a collection of family profiles, thought unworthy of being anywhere else, over the mantelpiece, and by their side, and pinned against the wall, a small sketch of a ship sent four years ago from the Mediterranean by William, with H.M.S. Antwerp at the bottom, in letters as tall as the mainmast.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)