Other forms: craters
A crater is the great round hollow left by a volcano or falling space rock. A volcanic crater, an impact crater, the crater rim.
Impact ones are round whatever angle the rock arrives at, because the explosion on landing does the digging rather than the rock itself. The moon keeps its craters because it has no weather to wear them away. The Greek word means a mixing bowl.
1nouncraterA round hollow left by a volcano or an impact.
“The meteor left a huge crater in the desert.”
crater is a hollow.
Greek krater means a mixing bowl for wine. The word was applied to volcanic hollows in 1613.
Ancient Greek
κρᾱτήρ — mixing-bowl, wassail-bowl
Latin
crātēr — basin
English, today
crater
First coined 1613, from Latin crātēr (“basin”), from Ancient Greek κρᾱτήρ (“mixing-bowl, wassail-bowl”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA