crevice
English[edit]
Etymology[edit]
From Middle English crevice, from Old French crevace, from crever (“to break, burst”), from Latin crepare (“to break, burst, crack”). Doublet of crevasse.
Pronunciation[edit]
Noun[edit]
crevice (plural crevices)
- A narrow crack or fissure, as in a rock or wall.
- 1830, Alfred Tennyson, “Mariana”, in Poems. […], volume I, London: Edward Moxon, […], published 1842, OCLC 1008064829, stanza VI, page 13:
- [T]he mouse / Behind the mouldering wainscot shriek'd, / Or from the crevice peer'd about.
- 16 March, 1926, Virginia Woolf, letter to V. Sackville-West
- I can't tell you how urbane and sprightly the old poll parrot was; and […] not a pocket, not a crevice, of pomp, humbug, respectability in him: he was fresh as a daisy.
- 1973, Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow:
- A dark turd appears out the crevice, out of the absolute darkness between her white buttocks.
Translations[edit]
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Verb[edit]
crevice (third-person singular simple present crevices, present participle crevicing, simple past and past participle creviced)
- To crack; to flaw.
- 1624, Henry Wotton, The Elements of Architecture:
- they are more apt in swagging down, to pierce with their points, then in the jacent Postures and […] crevice the Wall
References[edit]
- “crevice” in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
- “crevice” in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.
- crevice at OneLook Dictionary Search
Old French[edit]
Alternative forms[edit]
Etymology[edit]
From either Frankish *krebitja (“crayfish”), diminutive of *krebit (“crab”), from Proto-Germanic *krabitaz (“crab, cancer”), from Proto-Indo-European *grebʰ-, *gerebʰ- (“to scratch, crawl”), or from Old High German krebiz (“edible crustacean, crab”) (German Krebs (“crab”)), from the same source. Cognate with Middle Low German krēvet (“crab”), Dutch kreeft (“crayfish, lobster”), Old English crabba (“crab”).
Noun[edit]
crevice f (oblique plural crevices, nominative singular crevice, nominative plural crevices)
Descendants[edit]
- English terms inherited from Middle English
- English terms derived from Middle English
- English terms derived from Old French
- English terms derived from Latin
- English doublets
- English 2-syllable words
- English terms with IPA pronunciation
- English terms with audio links
- English lemmas
- English nouns
- English countable nouns
- English terms with quotations
- English verbs
- Old French terms borrowed from Frankish
- Old French terms derived from Frankish
- Old French terms derived from Proto-Germanic
- Old French terms derived from Proto-Indo-European
- Old French terms borrowed from Old High German
- Old French terms derived from Old High German
- Old French lemmas
- Old French nouns
- Old French feminine nouns