Rift

/ɹɪft/ · noun

Meaning

A chasm or fissure..

Definitions by Sense

1. A chasm or fissure.
2. (figurative) A lack of cohesion; a state of conflict, incompatibility, or emotional distance.
3. A break in the clouds, fog, mist etc., which allows light through.
4. A shallow place in a stream; a ford.
5. (intransitive) To form a rift; to split open.
6. (transitive) To cleave; to rive; to split.
7. (obsolete outside Scotland and northern UK) To belch.
8. past participle of rive

Example Sentences

The Grand Canyon is a rift in the Earth's surface, but is smaller than some of the undersea ones.

Where ashes are heaped in drifts / Over vineyard and field and town, / Whenever he starts and lifts / His head through the blackened rifts / Of the crags that keep him down

As far as the eye can reach is a sea of green tree tops, with occasionally a deep rift where there is a chasm. Here and there are silver threads where the rivers wind in deep gorges through the forests.

Far back in the dim geologic ages, when the sediments of the old seas were being gathered and outspread in smooth sheets like leaves of a book, and when these sediments became dry land, and were baked and crumbled into the sky as mountain ranges; when the lava-floods of the Fire Period were being lavishly poured forth from innumerable rifts and craters;[…].

My marriage is in trouble: the fight created a rift between us and we can't reconnect.

Elon Musk, the billionaire tech entrepreneur, has opened a new rift with Donald Trump by denouncing the US president’s tax and spending bill as a “disgusting abomination”.

I have but one rift in the darkness, that is that I have injured no one save myself by my folly, and that the extent of that folly you will never learn.

to rift an oak

Synonyms for rift

Antonyms for rift

Related Words

Word Forms

• rifts
• rifting
• rifted

Usage Notes

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