crevasse

American  

[kruh-vas] / krəˈvæs /

noun

crevasses plural

1. a fissure, or deep cleft, in glacial ice, the earth's surface, etc.

2. a breach in an embankment or levee.

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verb (used with object)

crevassed, crevassing

1. to fissure with crevasses.

crevasse British  

/ krɪˈvæs /

noun

1. a deep crack or fissure, esp in the ice of a glacier

2. a break in a river embankment

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verb

1. (tr) to make a break or fissure in (a dyke, wall, etc)

crevasse Scientific  

/ krĭ-văs′ /

1. A deep fissure in a glacier or other body of ice. Crevasses are usually caused by differential movement of parts of the ice over an uneven topography.

2. A large, deep fissure in the Earth caused by an earthquake.

3. A wide crack or breach in the bank of a river. Crevasses usually form during floods.

4. ◆ The sediments that spill out through the crevasse and fan out along the external margin of the river's bank form a crevasse splay deposit.

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• uncrevassed
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• crevasses
  plural

Etymology

Origin of crevasse

1805–15, < French; see crevice

Compare meaning

How does crevasse compare to similar and commonly confused words? Explore the most common comparisons:

• crevasse vs. crevice

Explanation

If you're heading to the North Pole by sled, watch out you don't fall into a crevasse — a deep fissure or crack in the snow or ice. Similar to the term "crevice," though "crevice" usually refers to a fissure in a rock face. Neither one is a nice place to get stuck. The word crevasse, as its spelling suggests, comes from an old French word, the verb crevare, meaning "to burst or break," and indicating how a crevasse was formed in the first place. The reason for the difference in the two terms, crevasse and crevice, was originally to indicate a difference in size: in general a crevasse is much larger than a crevice, which can often be extremely small.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

crevasse crevasses crevassed crevassing

The dragon will give Mae the flower, but first she must rescue his son, which has fallen down a crevasse.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 9, 2025

Ondrej Huserka fell into a crevasse on Thursday, after he and his climbing partner ascended the Lantang Lirung mountain in the Himalayas – the 99th-highest peak in the world.

From BBC ● Nov. 5, 2024

To Byatt, maternal mental health is not a gap but a crevasse.

From Salon ● Sep. 10, 2024

He described a near-death plunge into a crevasse when he failed to detect it beneath a blanket of snow.

From Seattle Times ● Apr. 22, 2024

I turned and walked to the side, along the gaping crevasse.

From "The Honest Truth" by Dan Gemeinhart

Three more bodies were recovered from within the crevasses of the glacier.

From BBC ● Oct. 12, 2024

It’s best known for wide spine-tingling crevasses spanned by flimsy-looking aluminum ladders lashed together with rope.

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 29, 2024

Their branches grow in wildly unpredictable directions, and the trees’ gray, gnarled trunks are shot through with holes and crevasses large enough to hide a sleeping child.

From New York Times ● Mar. 9, 2024

Yet for decades, due to the risk of avalanches and hidden snow-lined crevasses, no research expedition had ever been able to reach the peak of Nevado Huascarán to collect these ancient records.

From Science Daily ● Nov. 15, 2023

All the snow-bridges that the blizzard may have laid across crevasses are gone, shaken down, knocked in by this drumming and jumping of the ice and the earth beneath the ice.

From "The Left Hand of Darkness" by Ursula K. Le Guin

Looking out over those crevassed hills, with outcroppings of dark rock showing through the yellow grass, I felt that this spontaneous spirit of mercantilism was at the heart of the Silk Road.

From New York Times ● May 11, 2020

Cons: Because it’s fractured and crevassed, Hynek says it would likely be necessary to land off the glacier and traverse over to it to bring the ice and water back to the astronauts’ habitation module.

From Forbes ● Dec. 9, 2014

Climbers on other teams stepped in to shield Moro and his colleagues, who, spitting blood, packed up their essential gear and fled, taking a dangerous, highly crevassed back route down the mountain.

From Newsweek ● May 2, 2013

That face, a crevassed landscape that suggests sorrow and history, has the granitic grandeur of W. H. Auden in his later life.

From New York Times ● Dec. 9, 2011

Here between the volcanoes it is about four miles wide, and should not be hard going farther in towards the center, though it is more crevassed than I had hoped, and the surface rotten.

From "The Left Hand of Darkness" by Ursula K. Le Guin

Diagram illustrating the crevassing of Convex Sides of glacier323 29.

From The Glaciers of the Alps Being a narrative of excursions and ascents, etc. by Tyndall, John

But the measurement of the foregoing three lines shows that this cannot be the true cause of the crevassing.

From The Glaciers of the Alps Being a narrative of excursions and ascents, etc. by Tyndall, John

And see how beautifully these simple principles enable us to account for the remarkable crevassing of the eastern side of the Mer de Glace.

From The Glaciers of the Alps Being a narrative of excursions and ascents, etc. by Tyndall, John

Diagram illustrating the crevassing of Convex Sides of glacier.

From The Glaciers of the Alps Being a narrative of excursions and ascents, etc. by Tyndall, John

Thus we see that the crevassing of the eastern side of the glacier is a simple consequence of the quicker motion of that side, and does not, as hitherto supposed, demonstrate its slower motion.

From The Glaciers of the Alps Being a narrative of excursions and ascents, etc. by Tyndall, John

Related Words

• abyss
• chasm
• fissure