fissure means A long, narrow crack or opening made by breaking or splitting, especially in rock or earth.
fissure is pronounced /ˈfɪʃ.ə/.
Why “fissure” is a great word
A long, narrow crack or opening formed by the splitting or breaking of a solid substance. From Middle English fissure, from Old French fissure, from Latin fissūra ('a cleft, chink'), from findō ('to cleave, split, divide') + -tūra (nominal suffix); attested in English from c. 1400. Unlike a crack, which can be superficial and incidental, or a crevice, which is often a static gap, a fissure speaks of the profound act of division itself. It is the dark seam splitting a glacier as it groans seaward, the branching line across a dried riverbed that remembers water, and the precise fault in cerebral tissue that maps a neurological mystery. There is something permanent in a fissure: it marks not merely damage but the record of force, the scar where something whole admitted it could not hold.
Etymology
From Middle English fissure, from Old French fissure, from Latin fissūra (“a cleft, chink”), from findō (“to cleave, split, divide”) + -tūra (nominal suffix).
noun
- A long, narrow crack or opening made by breaking or splitting, especially in rock or earth.e.g.“After Miller's Dale Junction, the main Derby-Manchester line crosses the Wye for the last time and turns north-west up Great Rocks Dale, a natural fissure several miles long.” — 1960 April, J. P. Wilson, E. N. C. Haywood, “The route through the Peak—Derby to Manchester: Part Two”, in Trains Illustrated, page 224:
- A groove, deep furrow, elongated cleft or tear between body parts or in the substance of an organ.
- A break or slit in tissue usually at the junction of skin and mucous membrane.
- A state of incompatibility or disagreement.
verb
- To split, forming fissures.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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