fissure
Americannoun
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any long narrow cleft or crack, esp in a rock
-
a weakness or flaw indicating impending disruption or discord
fissures in a decaying empire
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anatomy a narrow split or groove that divides an organ such as the brain, lung, or liver into lobes See also sulcus
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a small unnatural crack in the skin or mucous membrane, as between the toes or at the anus
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a minute crack in the surface of a tooth, caused by imperfect joining of enamel during development
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of fissure
1375–1425; late Middle English < Latin fissūra cleaving, cleft, fissure, equivalent to fiss ( us ) divided ( see fissi-) + -ūra -ure
Explanation
A long fine crack in the surface of something is called a fissure. If you see a fissure in the ice on a frozen lake, you'll want to take off your skates and head back to the car. Fissure has its roots in the Latin word fissura, meaning a cleft or crack. If something breaks into fine cracks, you can describe the action with the verb form of fissure. For example, "She watched in horror as the earth fissured beneath her feet, recognizing the signs of an earthquake but powerless to do anything to save herself except throw herself to the ground and hang on."
Vocabulary lists containing fissure
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Geological Features
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Their Eyes Were Watching God
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Volcanoes in Iceland are capable of producing fissure eruptions that last for years or even decades, consistent with the 14 year platinum signal.
From Science Daily ● Mar. 20, 2026
Fittingly, the sound creates a crack in one of the home’s windows: Via that fissure, the unfolding apocalypse creeps into their lives.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 4, 2026
Asked about the fissure, Cortez Masto responded evenly and with diplomacy.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 15, 2025
Like the fissure between Tim and Millie, the cracks in our once-perfect relationship formed so gradually I didn’t even notice them.
From Salon ● Jul. 30, 2025
A wall of force shimmered along the fissure line, separating Kronos’s vanguard, my friends, and me from the bulk of the two armies.
From "The Last Olympian" by Rick Riordan
Colin Woodard, director of the Nationhood Lab at Salve Regina University, divides the US into a number of distinct identities, connected to those early fissures:
From BBC ● Jul. 4, 2026
As Hass delicately puts it, “The open divergences between Washington and its partners over the war’s legitimacy, execution, and fallout have exposed fissures that risk metastasizing to other issue areas over time.”
From Salon ● Jun. 21, 2026
Rohinton Mistry’s novel explores how all the fissures within this family are deepened by this development.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 30, 2026
He’s doing this in a way that exposes serious fissures within his own party?
From Slate ● Mar. 4, 2026
The great body was held back, but rivers spouted through fissures in the rolling wall and broke like day.
From "Their Eyes Were Watching God" by Zora Neale Hurston
This is “the scar that history has given us,” Boucheron continues, and ever since “we have been born already fissured, disturbed, uneasy.”
From Salon ● Feb. 8, 2026
“Not every slave worked directly for their owner—just like in today’s complex fissured workplace, where not every employee is working directly for the employer with whom they signed an employment contract.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 19, 2025
Neighborhoods near the golf course are under a city-issued evacuation warning, with the fissured land moving about 9 to 12 inches a week and houses cracking and sliding off their foundations.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 13, 2024
Bake for another 5 to 7 minutes, or until the cookies have fissured and are golden at the edges.
From Washington Times ● Aug. 15, 2023
Harrenhal's gatehouse, itself as large as Winterfell's Great Keep, was as scarred as it was massive, its stones fissured and discolored.
From "A Clash of Kings" by George R.R. Martin
The essence of workplace fissuring is control without responsibility.
From Slate ● Aug. 24, 2020
But this filmmaker’s penchants for relaxed jungle odysseys, fissuring narratives and unexpected appearances by talking monkeys hardly begin there.
From New York Times ● Feb. 25, 2016
When rifting of Pangea started at approximately 200 Ma, the fissuring was along a different line from the line of the earlier collision.
From Textbooks ● Jan. 1, 2015
The snow that had come down from the avalanches was fissuring, caused by an air pocket below.
From Time ● Jul. 9, 2012
As a rule the nearer to the base, the greater was the amount of fissuring observed.
From Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 Being Mainly a Clinical Study of the Nature and Effects of Injuries Produced by Bullets of Small Calibre by Makins, George Henry
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
