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What is "crevasse"

Crossword clues for crevasse

crevasse
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
crevasse
noun
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ As the sun shrank the ledge, he waited to plunge to his death into a crevasse.
▪ I see now that the devastating crevasse begun then would become unbreachable.
▪ In winter, the pavements become miniature glaciers with hidden crevasses!
▪ Others explored crevasses to estimate the thickness of the ice.
▪ The decision, when it came, opened suddenly, a crevasse.
▪ There was little soft snow and the ponies had no difficulty whatsoever negotiating the few small crevasses that cut across the route.
▪ There were a lot of crevasses.
▪ Weather will be difficult and ice crevasses.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Crevasse

Crevasse \Cre`vasse"\ (kr?`v?s"), n. [F. See Crevice.]

  1. A deep crevice or fissure, as in embankment; one of the clefts or fissure by which the mass of a glacier is divided.

  2. A breach in the levee or embankment of a river, caused by the pressure of the water, as on the lower Mississippi.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
crevasse

1823, of glaciers; 1814, of riverbanks (in that case from Louisiana French), from French crevasse, from Old French crevace "crevice" (see crevice). Essentially the same word as crevice, but re-adopted in senses for which the meaning that had taken hold in crevice was felt to be too small.

Wiktionary
crevasse

n. 1 (context literally English) A crack or fissure in a glacier or snow field; a chasm. 2 (context figuratively English) A discontinuity or “gap” between the accounted variables and an observed outcome. vb. (context intransitive English) To form crevasses.

WordNet
crevasse

n. a deep fissure

Wikipedia
Crevasse

A crevasse is a deep crack, or fracture, found in an ice sheet or glacier, as opposed to a crevice that forms in rock. Crevasses form as a result of the movement and resulting stress associated with the shear stress generated when two semi-rigid pieces above a plastic substrate have different rates of movement. The resulting intensity of the shear stress causes a breakage along the faces.

Usage examples of "crevasse".

I turned west, looking into the hazy whiteness for the folds and crevasses of the ice-shelf.

You can stay near the edges of the glacier, where there are almost no crevasses, and risk serious avalanche danger, or you can stick to the center of the glacier and never know when the snow and ice underfoot are suddenly going to collapse into a hidden crevasse.

The earlier snowstorm had hidden all the crevasses and we had heard or seen no avalanches in the past seventy-two hours.

There were far fewer crevasses near the face but an avalanche could catch us anywhere on the glacier.

Staying near the face carried its own risks, but it would also get us down the ice and out of avalanche danger in half the time it would take to probe for crevasses down the center of the glacier.

Gary and we all took off downhill, not worrying if there were bottomless crevasses directly in front of us, not caring at that point, just trying against all logic to outrun a wall of snow and ice and boulders roiling toward us at sixty miles per hour.

Boulders, rock crevasses, great furrows where continental drift dragged entire landmasses over the ocean floor, larger gaps where tectonic-plate activity opened up the bottom of the ocean and spewed forth lava.

The Breach descended through path-blasted ridges of black rock, passed over deep crevasses on narrow, slippery black iron bridges with no railings, and climbed steeply up more rock ridges.

You can stay near the edges of the glacier, where there are almost no crevasses, and risk serious avalanche danger, or you can stick to the center of the glacier and never know when the snow and ice underfoot is suddenly going to collapse into a hidden crevasse.

There were far fewer crevasses near the face, but an avalanche could catch us anywhere on the glacier.

Plant life was sparse, but feather ferns hung from crevasses near the roof.

There were a few crevasses here and there, but we only found them dangerous at one or two points.

The lower part was much broken up and dangerous, and the thin bridges of snow over the crevasses often broke under us.

It seems almost incredible, but these men succeeded in working their way on foot over sea-ice and land-ice, cracks and crevasses, hard snow and loose snow, to the Magnetic Pole, and making observations there.

These crevasses were not deep, but they were steep-sided, so that the dog could not get out without help.