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
The fossil remains were recovered from fissure deposits located on both sides of the Bristol Channel in southern Wales and southwest England.
From Science Daily ● Mar. 21, 2026
Perhaps the fissure should bring to mind Nordic depression, or familial misadventures in communication.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 6, 2025
Asked about the fissure, Cortez Masto responded evenly and with diplomacy.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 15, 2025
Prickles rising on the nape of my neck, I bent to scrutinize the tree trunk more closely: silvery bark, cool to the touch, ants marching out of a fissure in a glittering black thread.
From "The Secret History" by Donna Tartt
Celebrated Japanese writer-director Hirokazu Kore-eda specializes in gentle, sentimental films about the tiny fissures that form along the foundation of families.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 24, 2026
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
He’s doing this in a way that exposes serious fissures within his own party?
From Slate ● Mar. 4, 2026
Those fissures would fade to a gentler violet as monsoon season drew nearer, but they’d never truly disappear.
From "Beasts of Prey" by Ayana Gray
Black poplar can be identified by its deeply fissured bark and triangular leaves with mature trees often leaning to one side.
From BBC ● Jun. 19, 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
The next day, dawn broke as they were crossing a cracked and fissured plain of hard red earth.
From "A Clash of Kings" by George R.R. Martin
But in their day-to-day interactions, Hollingworth and Walton were fissuring and floundering.
From New York Times ● Apr. 20, 2022
Workplace fissuring reduces wages by blocking workers from access to higher wages, career ladders, and workplace protections such as union rights with the lead firm.
From Slate ● Aug. 24, 2020
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
A third method depends on the fissuring of walls, supposing that we know the force per unit surface which, when suddenly applied, is just sufficient to produce fracture.
From A Study of Recent Earthquakes by Charles Davison
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.
