San Andreas fault
[san an-drey-uh s]
noun Geology.
an active strike-slip fault in W United States, extending from San Francisco to S California and forming the on-land portion of the western margin of the North American Plate.
RELATED CONTENT
Why is the San Francisco football team called the 49ers?When the California Gold Rush began in 1848, American football didn’t exist. But those aggressive gold miners would give their nickname to a football team one hundred years later. Gold was first found in Northern California in January 1848, and it took about a year for the news to travel and inspire thousands of fortune seekers to head west. The miners who arrived in 1849 …
Why is a new element named after a suburb of San Francisco?On Saturday the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry proposed the names of two new elements. Currently element number 114 and element number 116 do not have official names in the periodic table of elements. The elements were previously known as ununquadium and ununhexium. Those long, unpronounceable words were the temporarily used systematic element names. The names are generated from their atomic number, but …
Origin of San Andreas fault
after San Andreas Lake, located in the rift, in San Mateo County
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2019
San Andreas Fault
[(san an-dray-uhs)]
A fault in California where the North American and the Pacific tectonic plates meet and slide past each other. (See earthquake and plate tectonics.)
Note
A major earthquake along this fault has been predicted for many years. Because California is densely populated, such an event might have very serious consequences.
San Andreas Fault
[(san an-dray-uhs)]
A major geologic fault located in California. It runs from San Francisco to near San Diego and has been the source of serious earthquakes. (See also under “Earth Sciences.”)
The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition
Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.