Rift
/ɹɪft/ noun, verb
noun, verb ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
Noun
- 1 A chasm or fissure.
"The Grand Canyon is a rift in the Earth's surface, but is smaller than some of the undersea ones."
- 2 a personal or social separation (as between opposing factions) wordnet
- 3 A lack of cohesion; a state of conflict, incompatibility, or emotional distance. figuratively
"My marriage is in trouble: the fight created a rift between us and we can't reconnect."
- 4 a narrow fissure in rock wordnet
- 5 A break in the clouds, fog, mist etc., which allows light through.
"I have but one rift in the darkness, that is that I have injured no one save myself by my folly, and that the extent of that folly you will never learn."
Show 2 more definitions
- 6 a gap between cloud masses wordnet
- 7 A shallow place in a stream; a ford.
Verb
- 1 To form a rift; to split open. intransitive
- 2 To belch.
- 3 past participle of rive form-of, obsolete, participle, past
"The mightie trunck halfe rent, with ragged rift Doth roll adowne the rocks, and fall with fearefull drift."
- 4 To cleave; to rive; to split. transitive
"to rift an oak"
Example
More examples"My granddaughter's behaviour has caused a rift in our family."
Etymology
Etymology 1
From Middle English rift, of North Germanic origin; akin to Danish rift, Norwegian Bokmål rift (“breach”), Old Norse rífa (“to tear”). More at rive.
Etymology 2
From Old Norse rypta.