Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A shallow area in a waterway.
  • noun The backwash of a wave that has broken upon a beach.
  • noun A fissure, crack, or opening, as in rock.
  • noun A break in friendly relations.
  • noun Geology An area where the lithosphere is thinning, typically associated with large faults and grabens.
  • intransitive verb To split open; break.
  • intransitive verb To cause to split open or break.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Split; specifically, following the general direction of the splitting or checking: said of a log: as, rift pine boards. Compare quartered, 4.
  • noun A shallow place in a stream; a fording-place; also, rough water indicating submerged rocks.
  • noun In wood-working, a saw in which the cutting-teeth are placed at the ends of radial arms instead of upon the rim of a disk.
  • noun In geology, one of the principal cleavages or planes of weakness in building-stone, as quarried, of which the quarrymen take advantage. The two others, commonly occurring at right angles with it and with one another, are called the cut-off and the lift.
  • noun A veil; a curtain.
  • To rive; cleave; split.
  • To make or effect by cleavage.
  • To burst open; split.
  • To belch.
  • noun An opening made by riving or splitting; a fissure; a cleft or crevice; a chink.
  • noun A riving or splitting; a shattering.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • p. p. of rive.
  • intransitive verb To burst open; to split.
  • intransitive verb Prov. Eng. & Scot. To belch.
  • noun An opening made by riving or splitting; a cleft; a fissure.
  • noun A shallow place in a stream; a ford.
  • transitive verb To cleave; to rive; to split

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A chasm or fissure.
  • noun A break in the clouds, fog, mist etc., which allows light through.
  • verb To form a rift.
  • verb obsolete except Scotland and northern UK To belch.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a narrow fissure in rock
  • noun a personal or social separation (as between opposing factions)
  • noun a gap between cloud masses

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Probably alteration of dialectal riff, reef, from Dutch rif, riffe; see reef.]

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, of Scandinavian origin.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Middle English, of Scandinavian origin; akin to Danish/Norwegian rift 'breach', Old Norse rífa 'to tear'. More at rive.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old Norse rypta.

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word rift.

Examples

  • Jack has all that power inside of him ... maybe repairing the rift is the "reason" he was brought into exisitence.

    THIS JUST IN: I STILL TEST PONY-POSITIVE rabid1st 2009

  • In fact, the rift is so vital, so strong, that there is a specific law and a specific organization that pertains to just this thing.

    Reading the Hugo Nominees: The City & The City Big Jim 2010

  • Not coincidentally, this rift is deepening even as Gujarat booms economically, with brand-new malls, multi plexes, highways, and private ports transforming it into a pulsing region-state athwart Indian Ocean trade routes.

    India’s New Face 2009

  • Not coincidentally, this rift is deepening even as Gujarat booms economically, with brand-new malls, multi plexes, highways, and private ports transforming it into a pulsing region-state athwart Indian Ocean trade routes.

    India’s New Face 2009

  • Here we see what the real rift is about: the Winchester love.

    Supernatural Episode 5.05 Spoilers rabid1st 2009

  • The only way to avoid the rift is to generalize its teaching.

    Global Voices in English » Morocco: Teaching “Berber” in Schools 2009

  • The second rift is over whether the French company is required to buy 12 power plants — most of them coal-fired — from Constellation for as much as $2 billion.

    New Twist in Nuclear Venture Naureen S. Malik 2010

  • The rift is one of the easiest ways for the Doctor to connect with other dimensions.

    THIS JUST IN: I STILL TEST PONY-POSITIVE rabid1st 2009

  • Not coincidentally, this rift is deepening even as Gujarat booms economically, with brand-new malls, multi plexes, highways, and private ports transforming it into a pulsing region-state athwart Indian Ocean trade routes.

    India’s New Face 2009

  • Never mind that the rift is now no longer monitored.

    TORCHWOOD: CoE...Episode 5...Spoilers! rabid1st 2009

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • A belch. --A Provincial Glossary, 1787.

    Century Dictionary lists "to belch" under the noun definitions of rift.

    May 5, 2011