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Black Hole

/blak hōl/

n. When a piece of email or netnews disappears mysteriously between its origin and destination sites (that is, without returning a bounce message) it is commonly said to have 'fallen into a black hole'. "I think there's a black hole at foovax!" conveys suspicion that site foovax has been dropping a lot of stuff on the floor lately (see drop on the floor). The implied metaphor of email as interstellar travel is interesting in itself.

Compare bit bucket.