Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A deep fissure, as in a glacier; a chasm.
- n. A crack or breach in a dike or levee.
- v. To develop or cause to develop crevasses.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A fissure or crack: a term used by English writers in describing glaciers, to designate a rent or fissure in the ice, which may be of greater or less depth, and from an inch or two to many feet in width.
- n. In the United States, a breach in the embankment or levee of a river, occasioned by the pressure of water, as in the lower Mississippi.
- To rend, as the surface of a glacier, with fissures and cracks.
Wiktionary
- n. literally A crack or fissure in a glacier or snow field; a chasm.
- n. figuratively A discontinuity or “gap” between the accounted variables and an observed outcome.
- v. intransitive To form crevasses.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A deep crevice or fissure, as in embankment; one of the clefts or fissure by which the mass of a glacier is divided.
- n. U.S. A breach in the levee or embankment of a river, caused by the pressure of the water, as on the lower Mississippi.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a deep fissure
Etymologies
- From French crevasse. (Wiktionary)
- French, from Old French crevace, crevice; see crevice. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Across the crevasse was a bridge made of ropes, spangled with lights and tied to the crumbling ruins at either end.”
“The crevasse was a great slit, deep into the standing cliff.”
“On the far brink of the crevasse were the forms of men, who seemed to be waving their arms in the air and shouting.”
“Twice I have owed safety to a snow bridge, and it seems to me that the chance of finding some obstruction or some saving fault in the crevasse is a good one, but I am far from thinking that such a chance can be relied upon, and it would be an awful situation to fall beyond the limits of the”
“Scientists have known for years that when the river flows free of its banks, in a phenomenon called a crevasse, land forms.”
“The break in the levee, known as a crevasse, would flush out oil and slowly help build land.”
“As now the mass continues to advance, the crevasses must advance with it; and as it moves more rapidly toward the middle than on the margins, that end of the crevasse which is farthest removed from the projecting rock must move more rapidly also; the consequence is, that all the older lateral crevasses, after a certain time, point downward, while the fresh ones point upward.”
“In very high water an occasional break in a levee, call a "crevasse", may overflow a small local area, but with the present scientific skill and equipment, these breaks are generally closed promptly, with but little damage to land affected.”
“Remember, now that underneath this vast body, this "crevasse," lay buried the seed cane, the cotton-seed, the rice, the cereals, the homes, the all of over one hundred thousand people.”
“Among the most disastrous instances of the "crevasse" is that of May, 1816, when the river broke through, nine miles above New Orleans, destroying numbers of plantations, and inundating the back part of the city.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘crevasse’.
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
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Landforms
A Cyclopedia of Landforms.
plain, mountain, canyon, cliff, hill, arch, cave, plateau, mesa, butte, chimney, peneplain and 169 more...
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ficciones's list
encyclopedic
imbroglio, splendour, brilliance, labyrinth, vast, precipice, ebb and flow, tidal, crevasse, resonate, redolent, prudent and 55 more...
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Knee Deep in Chic
Words, prose, bon mots, and literary styles that cause a contagious enthusiasm by its very existence. They can be muses to a story. rekindling the spark that went out. The cure-all elixir to a bla...
euphuism, quiddity, saudade, zugzwang, razbliuto, parti pris, oleaginous, crevasse, chantepleure, chiaroscuro, prestidigitation, dysphemism and 79 more...
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dandy's list
favourite words
cattywampus, wibble, fenagle, whisker, sneeze, wisteria, honeysuckle, clove, perihelion, glimmer, twilight, dusk and 264 more...
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GRE Words
abjure, unswear, state, rescission, indemnification, ab, reny, abnegate, vitiated, vitiate, adumbrated, abash and 378 more...
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imogen's Words
coagitate, cloche, harum-scarum, foxglove, cryptolect, cant, roux, angora, duff, ulysse, schadenfreude, pepperpot and 315 more...
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the earth
Planetary chaos: terrain, landscape and geology excluding rocks. (See "the geologist" list for the latter.)
butte, karst, caldera, mesa, laccolith, cwm, crater, alp, precipice, sierra, badlands, prairie and 122 more...
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Words for ice and snow
Environmental Ice and Snow
(excluding all the food ice)ice, icicle, frazil, frasil, sleet, slush, snow, flurry, snowfall, freeze, flash-freeze, quick-freeze and 618 more...
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vmarinelli's Words
canard, gumption, inexorable, insouciance, inviolable, mordant, euphonious, sawbuck, carpe diem, pay dirt, adipocere, profligate and 496 more...
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Vocab++
Words as I learn them.
fetid, mezzanine, hiatus, austerity, subliminal, resplendent, implacable, impugn, debase, exiguous, cirque, holster and 2538 more...
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GRE list 1
Bloviate, Bacchanalia, mirth, covet, inconsequential, prescient, heresy, revelry, modality, gentrify, vitiate, tantalize and 182 more...
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Landscape
riparian, littoral, talus, fen, ambit, savanna, remnant prairie, shortgrass prairie, tallgrass prairie, marsh, swamp, marshy and 199 more...
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5-0
Hecko, words! I’m so happy I’ve found you. I want to keep you all and never want to lose you again. I hope you like it here.
amscray, thistledown, tine, tinsel, pungent, snarl, wail, lanky, viscid, dawdle, luminous, stow and 2719 more...
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fearraigh's Words
heretofore, seldom, cunt, calamity, overhead, phalanx, flunky, factotum, terrestrial, dormant, afflatus, periphery and 156 more...
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Lay of the Land
all kinds of scapes
steppe, veld, veldt, campo, llano, taiga, krummholz, elfinwood, tundra, sward, lea, heath and 197 more...
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