crevice

See also: crevasse

English

Etymology

From Middle English crevice, from Old French crevace, from crever (“to break, burst”), from Latin crepare (“to break, burst, crack”). Doublet of crevasse.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈkɹɛvɪs/

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

Noun

crevice (plural crevices)

1. A narrow crack or fissure, as in a rock or wall.
   • 1830 June, Alfred Tennyson, “Mariana”, in Poems. […], volume I, London: Edward Moxon, […], published 1842, →OCLC, stanza VI, page 13:

     [T]he mouse / Behind the mouldering wainscot shriek'd, / Or from the crevice peer'd about.

   • 16 March, 1926, Virginia Woolf, letter to V. Sackville-West

     I can't tell you how urbane and sprightly the old poll parrot was; and […] not a pocket, not a crevice, of pomp, humbug, respectability in him: he was fresh as a daisy.

   • 1973, Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow:

     A dark turd appears out the crevice, out of the absolute darkness between her white buttocks.

2. (slang) The vagina.
   • 2018, Michael J. Manley, Still Waters Run Deep, page 130:

     […] howling like a wolf as I penetrated her harder and harder as she asked for more and more and moved her legs to the left and to the right so I could go deeper and deeper into her crevice.

Derived terms

• creviceless
• eastern crevice skink

 

Translations

narrow crack

• Ancient Greek: please add this translation if you can
• Bulgarian: пукнатина (bg) f (puknatina), цепнатина (bg) f (cepnatina)
• Chinese (Simplified): 缝隙 (zh) (fèngxì)
• Dutch: spleet (nl)
• Esperanto: fendaĵo
• Finnish: halkeama (fi)
• French: fissure (fr) f fente (fr) f, anfractuosité (fr) f
• Georgian: ნაპრალი (naṗrali)
• German: Spalt (de) m, Spalte (de) f, Felsspalt m (rock), Felsritze f (rock), Mauerspalt (wall), Mauerritze f (wall)
• Hebrew: סדק (he) m (sédek), בקיע m (bekía)
• Hungarian: hasadék (hu) (rock), repedés (hu) (wall)
• Italian: fessura (it) f, fenditura (it) f, crepa (it) f
• Japanese: 亀裂 (ja) (きれつ, kiretsu)
• Latin: rīma (la) f, crepātūra f
• Macedonian: пукна́тина f (puknátina), про́цеп m (prócep)
• Persian: شکاف (fa) (šekâf), رخنه (fa) (rexne)
• Polish: szpara (pl) f, rysa (pl) f, szczelina (pl) f
• Portuguese: fenda (pt) f, fresta (pt) f
• Romanian: spărtură (ro) f, fisură (ro) f
• Russian: тре́щина (ru) f (tréščina), расще́лина (ru) f (rasščélina)
• Serbo-Croatian: pukotina (sh) f
• Slovak: štrbina (sk), škára
• Swedish: spricka (sv) c, klyfta (sv) c, skreva (sv) c
• Tagalog: biyak
• Turkish: çatlak (tr), yarık (tr), gedik (tr)

Verb

crevice (third-person singular simple present crevices, present participle crevicing, simple past and past participle creviced)

1. To crack; to flaw.
   • 1624, Henry Wotton, The Elements of Architecture, […], London: […] Iohn Bill, →OCLC:

     they are more apt in swagging down, to pierce with their points, then in the jacent Postures and […] crevice the Wall

References

• “crevice”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• “crevice”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.
• “crevice”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.

Old French

Alternative forms

• crevez, crevis, crevesce, creveche, creveis, escrevise, escreveice, escreviche

Etymology

From either Frankish *krebitja (“crayfish”), diminutive of *krebit (“crab”), from Proto-Germanic *krabitaz (“crab, cancer”), from Proto-Indo-European *grebʰ-, *gerebʰ- (“to scratch, crawl”), or from Old High German krebiz (“edible crustacean, crab”) (German Krebs (“crab”)), from the same source. Cognate with Middle Low German krēvet (“crab”), Dutch kreeft (“crayfish, lobster”), Old English crabba (“crab”).

Noun

crevice oblique singular, f (oblique plural crevices, nominative singular crevice, nominative plural crevices)

1. crayfish, crawfish

Descendants

• Middle French: escrevice, escrevisse, escrevisce, crevis, creviche, crevice
  • French: écrevisse
• → Middle Dutch: crevetse
• → Middle English: crevis, crevyse, creuez, crevez, crevise, creveys, crevesse, krevys
  • English: crevis; crayfish, crawfish (influenced by fish)