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Chasma
Definitions
- 1 A long, narrow, steep-sided depression on a planet (often other than Earth), a moon, or another body in the Solar System.
"The most prominent tectonic feature on Tethys is the globe-girdling Ithaca Chasma, which is 60 to 100 km wide, 3–4 km deep, and can be traced through at least 270° of a rough great circle (Smith et al, 1982; Moore & Ahern, 1983). […] Odysseys Tangent Chasma. A prominent chasma 60–80 km wide and at least 800 km long (90° arc), visible in 80.27, is tangent to the rim of Odysseus, trending about 10° east of north. The chasma intersects a ridge-bounded trough radial to Odysseus […] and is then lost in the zone around the North Pole that is shadowed in all of the extant images."
- 2 An aurora. obsolete, rare
"Thus Cornelius Gemma, Professor of Medicine in Louvain, mentions them [the aurora borealis] under the name of chasma, as appearing in Brabant on the 13th February and 28th September, 1575."
- 3 Obsolete form of chasm. alt-of, obsolete
Etymology
From Latin chasma, from Ancient Greek χάσμα (khásma, “abyss, cleft”), from Ancient Greek χᾰ́σκω (khắskō, “to gape, yawn”) (possibly from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰan-, *gʰan- (“to gape, yawn”) + -σκω (-skō, inchoative suffix forming a present-tense word), from Proto-Indo-European *-sḱéti (suffix forming a durative or iterative imperfective verb); or from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰeh₁y- (“to gape, yawn”)) + Ancient Greek -μᾰ (-mă, suffix forming a noun denoting the result of an action) (from Proto-Indo-European *-mn̥ (suffix forming an action or result noun)). Doublet of chasm. The obsolete “aurora” sense is from the fact that aurorae were thought to be rifts in the sky from which light shone through: see the 1822 quotation.
See also for "chasma"
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