crevasse

From French crevasse. Doublet of crevice.

• Rhymes: -æs
• IPA^(key): /kɹəˈvæs/

• Audio (Southern England)

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crevasse (plural crevasses)

1. A crack or fissure in a glacier or snowfield; a chasm.
2. (US) A breach in a canal or river bank.
3. (by extension) Any cleft or fissure.
   • 2010, Scott R. Riley, A Lost Hero Found, page 111:

     I moved my left hand to the small of her back, just above her belt-line and stroked the peach fuzz in her crevasse with my fingers.

4. (figuratively) A discontinuity or “gap” between the accounted variables and an observed outcome.
   • 1954: Gilbert Ryle, Dilemmas: The Tarner Lectures, 1953, dilemma vii: Perception, page 105 (The Syndics of the Cambridge University Press)

     […] he laments that he can find no physiological phenomenon answering to his subject’s winning a race, or losing it. Between his terminal output of energy and his victory or defeat there is a mysterious crevasse. Physiology is baffled.

crevasse (third-person singular simple present crevasses, present participle crevassing, simple past and past participle crevassed)

1. (intransitive) To form crevasses.
2. (transitive) To fissure with crevasses.

• IPA^(key): /kʁə.vas/

• audio

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• Rhymes: -as

From Old French crevace, crever +‎ -asse.

crevasse f (plural crevasses)

1. crevasse

Inflected forms

crevasse

1. first-person singular imperfect subjunctive of crever

• “crevasse”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

• crevassa (dated)

• Hyphenation: cre‧vas‧se

crevasse f (plural crevasses)

1. (glaciology) crevasse (a crack or fissure in a glacier or snow field)