crevice

See also: crevasse

English

Etymology

From Middle English crevice, from Old French crevace, from crever (“to break, burst”), from Latin crepare (“to break, burst, crack”). Doublet of crevasse.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈkɹɛvɪs/

Noun

crevice (plural crevices)

1. A narrow crack or fissure, as in a rock or wall.
   • Tennyson

     The mouse, / Behind the moldering wainscot, shrieked, / Or from the crevice peered about.

   • William Butler Yeats

     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

narrow crack

• Ancient Greek: please add this translation if you can
• Bulgarian: пукнатина (bg) f (puknatina), цепнатина (bg) f (cepnatina)
• Chinese (Simplified): 缝隙 (zh) (fèngxì)
• Dutch: spleet (nl)
• Esperanto: fendaĵo
• Finnish: halkeama (fi)
• French: fissure (fr) f fente (fr) f
• Georgian: ნაპრალი (naṗrali)
• German: Spalt (de) m, Spalte (de) f, Felsspalt m (rock), Felsritze f (rock), Mauerspalt (wall), Mauerritze f (wall)
• Hebrew: סדק (he) m (sédek), בקיע m (bekía)
• Hungarian: hasadék (hu) (rock), repedés (hu) (wall)
• (deprecated template usage) {{trans-mid}}
• Italian: fessura (it) f, fenditura (it) f, crepa (it) f
• Japanese: 亀裂 (きれつ, kiretsu)
• Latin: please add this translation if you can
• Persian: شکاف (fa) (šekâf), رخنه (fa) (rexne)
• Polish: szpara (pl) f, rysa (pl) f, szczelina (pl) f
• Portuguese: fenda (pt) f, fresta (pt) f
• Romanian: spǎrturǎ f, fisurǎ f
• Russian: тре́щина (ru) f (tréščina), расще́лина (ru) f (rasščélina)
• Serbo-Croatian: pukotina (sh) f
• Slovak: štrbina (sk), škára
• Swedish: spricka (sv) c, klyfta (sv) c, skreva (sv) c
• Turkish: çatlak (tr), yarık (tr), gedik (tr)

Verb

1. To crack; to flaw.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Sir H. Wotton to this entry?)

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “crevice”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)

References

• “crevice”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• “crevice”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.
• “crevice”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.

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Old French

Alternative forms

• crevez, crevis, crevesce, creveche, creveis, escrevise, escreveice, escreviche

Etymology

From Frankish *krebitja (“crayfish”), diminutive of *krebit (“crab”), from Proto-Germanic *krabitaz (“crab, cancer”), from Proto-Indo-European *grebʰ-, *gerebʰ- (“to scratch, crawl”). Akin to Old High German krebiz (“edible crustacean, crab”) (German Krebs (“crab”)), Middle Low German krēvet (“crab”), Dutch kreeft (“crayfish, lobster”), Old English crabba (“crab”).

Noun

crevice oblique singular, f (oblique plural crevices, nominative singular crevice, nominative plural crevices)

1. crayfish, crawfish

Descendants

• Middle French: escrevice, escrevisse, escrevisce, crevis, creviche, crevice
  • French: écrevisse
• → Middle Dutch: crevetse
• → Middle English: crevis, crevyse, creuez, crevez, crevise, creveys, crevesse, krevys
  • English: crevis; crayfish, crawfish (influenced by fish)