rift

English

Pronunciation

• enPR: rĭft, IPA^(key): /ɹɪft/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɪft
• Homophone: riffed

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.

Noun

rift (plural rifts)

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.

   • 1863, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Enceladus”, in Birds of Passage‎^[1]:

     Where ashes are heaped in drifts / Over vineyard and field and town, / Whenever he starts and lifts / His head through the blackened rifts / Of the crags that keep him down

   • 1897, Bram Stoker, Dracula, Westminster [London]: Archibald Constable and Company, […], →OCLC:

     As far as the eye can reach is a sea of green tree tops, with occasionally a deep rift where there is a chasm. Here and there are silver threads where the rivers wind in deep gorges through the forests.

   • 1918, John Muir, Steep Trails‎^[2]:

     Far back in the dim geologic ages, when the sediments of the old seas were being gathered and outspread in smooth sheets like leaves of a book, and when these sediments became dry land, and were baked and crumbled into the sky as mountain ranges; when the lava-floods of the Fire Period were being lavishly poured forth from innumerable rifts and craters; […] .

2. (figurative) A lack of cohesion; a state of conflict, incompatibility, or emotional distance.

   My marriage is in trouble: the fight created a rift between us and we can't reconnect.

   • 2025 June 3, David Smith, “Elon Musk calls Trump’s ‘big, beautiful’ tax bill a ‘disgusting abomination’”, in The Guardian‎^[3], →ISSN:

     Elon Musk, the billionaire tech entrepreneur, has opened a new rift with Donald Trump by denouncing the US president’s tax and spending bill as a “disgusting abomination”.

3. A break in the clouds, fog, mist etc., which allows light through.
   • 1931, William Faulkner, Sanctuary, Vintage, published 1993, page 130:

     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.

4. A shallow place in a stream; a ford.

Derived terms

• palaeorift
• paleorift
• riftless
• rift saw
• riftsawn
• rift valley
• rifty
• rift zone

Descendants

• → Portuguese: rifte

Translations

chasm or fissure

• Bulgarian: цепнатина (bg) f (cepnatina)
• Chinese:

  Cantonese: 罅 (laa³)

  Mandarin: 裂縫 / 裂缝 (zh) (lièfèng)

• Czech: trhlina f, prasklina (cs) f, puklina f
• Danish: rift
• Dutch: breuk (nl) m
• Esperanto: fendo, breĉo
• Finnish: kuilu (fi), halkeama (fi), repeämä (fi)
• French: fente (fr), fissure (fr)
• German: Riss (de) m
• Greek:

  Ancient Greek: χάσμα n (khásma)

• Hindi: दरार (hi) f (darār), अनुपाट (anupāṭ), विभ्रंश (hi) (vibhrañś), फटन (phaṭan)
• Kazakh: сызат (syzat), жарық (jaryq)
• Macedonian: цепна́тина f (cepnátina), ра́сцеп m (ráscep), пукна́тина f (puknátina)
• Māori: tawhā
• Norwegian: rift
• Old English: cleofa m
• Portuguese: rifte (pt) m
• Russian: тре́щина (ru) f (tréščina), разры́в (ru) m (razrýv), рассе́лина (ru) f (rassélina)
• Slovak: trhlina f
• Spanish: cisma (es), fisura (es)
• Turkish:

  Ottoman Turkish: آرالق (aralık), چاك (çâk)

break in the clouds, fog, mist etc.

• Czech: trhlina f
• Finnish: aukko (fi); valopilkku (fi) (figuratively)
• French: percée (fr), éclaircie (fr)
• Russian: просве́т (ru) m (prosvét)

shallow place in a stream — see ford

Verb

rift (third-person singular simple present rifts, present participle rifting, simple past and past participle rifted)

1. (intransitive) To form a rift; to split open.
2. (transitive) To cleave; to rive; to split.

   to rift an oak

   • 1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, (please specify the scene number in lowercase Roman numerals)]:

     to the dread rattling thunder / Have I given fire and rifted Jove's stout oak / With his own bolt

   • 1822, William Wordsworth, A Jewish Family (in a small valley opposite St. Goar, upon the Rhine)‎^[4], lines 9–11:

     The Mother—her thou must have seen, / In spirit, ere she came / To dwell these rifted rocks between.

   • 1894, Ivan Dexter, Talmud: A Strange Narrative of Central Australia, published in serial form in Port Adelaide News and Lefevre's Peninsula Advertiser (SA), Chapter III, [5]

     he stopped rigid as one petrified and gazed through the rifted logs of the raft into the water.

Etymology 2

From Old Norse rypta.

Verb

rift (third-person singular simple present rifts, present participle rifting, simple past and past participle rifted)

1. (obsolete outside Scotland and northern UK) To belch.

Etymology 3

Verb

rift (obsolete)

1. past participle of rive

   The mightie trunck halfe rent, with ragged rift
   Doth roll adowne the rocks, and fall with fearefull drift.

   • 1986 December 21, Corinne Lightweaver, “AIDS Fears Shadow Lesbian's Memories”, in Gay Community News, volume 14, number 23, page 6:

     Whether these men are alive or not, the fragile meeting ground I shared with them has been rift apart by a microscopic menace they didn't tell us about in high school biology.

Anagrams

• FTIR, frit

Danish

Etymology

From the verb rive.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): [ˈʁɛfd̥]

Noun

rift c (singular definite riften, plural indefinite rifter)

1. a rip, tear (in fabric)
2. a scratch (on skin, paint)

Declension

Declension of rift

common gender	singular		plural
	indefinite	definite	indefinite	definite
nominative	rift	riften	rifter	rifterne
genitive	rifts	riftens	rifters	rifternes

See also

• flænge

References

• “rift” in Den Danske Ordbog

French

Noun

rift m (plural rifts)

1. (geology) rift

Norwegian Bokmål

Etymology

From the verb rive.

Noun

rift f or m (definite singular rifta or riften, indefinite plural rifter, definite plural riftene)

1. a rip, tear (in fabric)
2. a break (in the clouds)
3. a scratch (on skin, paint)
4. a rift (geology)

Derived terms

• riftdal

References

• “rift” in The Bokmål Dictionary.
• “rift” in Det Norske Akademis ordbok (NAOB).

Norwegian Nynorsk

Etymology

From the verb rive or riva.

Noun

rift f (definite singular rifta, indefinite plural rifter, definite plural riftene)

1. a rip, tear (in fabric)
2. a break (in the clouds)
3. a scratch (on skin, paint)
4. a rift (geology)

Derived terms

• riftdal

References

• “rift” in The Nynorsk Dictionary.

Old English

Etymology

From Proto-Germanic *riftą, *riftiją, perhaps from Proto-Indo-European *h₁rebʰ- (“to cover; arch over; vault”). Cognate with Old High German peinrefta (“legwear; leggings”), Old Norse ript, ripti (“a kind of cloth; linen jerkin”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /rift/

Noun

rift n (nominative plural rift)

1. a veil; curtain; cloak

Related terms

• rifte

Descendants

• Middle English: rift

Romanian

Etymology

Borrowed from French rift.

Noun

rift n (plural rifturi)

1. rift

Declension

	singular		plural
	indefinite	definite	indefinite	definite
nominative-accusative	rift	riftul	rifturi	rifturile
genitive-dative	rift	riftului	rifturi	rifturilor
vocative	riftule		rifturilor

Scots

Etymology

From Old Norse rypta.

Verb

rift (third-person singular simple present rifts, present participle riftin, simple past and past participle riftit)

1. to belch, burp