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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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:
The platinum spike may have come from a volcanic fissure eruption in Iceland rather than an object from space.
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
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
However, there has been little concern to aviation as these recent eruptions are mostly small fissure eruptions with large and slow lava flows - rather than the explosive ash eruption from Eyjafjallajökull.
From BBC ● Apr. 15, 2025
We dragged our boats across the beach toward a sea cave, its entrance a black fissure in a hill of rocks.
From "Hollow City" by Ransom Riggs
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
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
Fracking involves injecting high-pressure liquid between layers of rock to force open fissures and release any oil and natural gas stored there.
From BBC ● Feb. 26, 2026
I saw crisscrossing patterns of fissures and cracks.
From "Educated" by Tara Westover
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
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
The essence of workplace fissuring is control without responsibility.
From Slate ● Aug. 24, 2020
The union is already fissuring as a result of a huge migrant flow from Syria and elsewhere, combined with an economic crisis.
From New York Times ● Mar. 22, 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 skin is hairless, faintly reddish, smooth and shining, with a varnished and thin appearance, and with a tendency to fissuring.
From Essentials of Diseases of the Skin Including the Syphilodermata Arranged in the Form of Questions and Answers Prepared Especially for Students of Medicine by Stelwagon, Henry Weightman
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.
