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:
Ultimately, it will come down to the amount of time that passes and the depth of the fissure between you and your son and daughter-in-law.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 18, 2026
Secretary of State Marco Rubio offered a warmer tone at this year’s Munich Security Conference, but European officials say the trans-Atlantic fissure remains.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 22, 2026
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
Though most of the film is spent building up to this fissure, “Oh. What. Fun.” stumbles when Claire and her family separate.
From Salon ● Dec. 3, 2025
He’d brought one of his bowls for Sam and ran his fingers over its bottom as if testing an imperceptible fissure.
From "The Underground Railroad: A Novel" by Colson Whitehead
There are fissures between many groups, with a huge array of conflicting issues at stake.
From BBC ● Aug. 14, 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 afternoon came, and the sun, going west towards the mountains, sent out long yellow beams between the cracks and fissures of the clouds.
From "The Two Towers" by J. R. R. Tolkien
A nearby building had deep fissured in its façade.
From BBC ● Aug. 10, 2026
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 nine to 12 inches a week and houses cracking and sliding off their foundations.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 13, 2024
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
The only deformed Lee-Metford bullets that I saw removed from the body were of the 'slipper' variety, exactly corresponding to the similarly altered Mausers, and with no fissuring of the mantle.
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 George Henry Makins
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.
