rift

English

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /ɹɪft/
  • Rhymes: -ɪft

Etymology 1

Middle English, of Scandinavian origin; akin to Danish rift, Norwegian rift (“breach”), Old Norse rífa (“to tear”). More at rive.

Noun

rift (plural rifts)

  1. A chasm or fissure.
    My marriage is in trouble: the fight created a rift between us and we can't reconnect.
    The Grand Canyon is a rift in the Earth's surface, but is smaller than some of the undersea ones.
  2. A break in the clouds, fog, mist etc., which allows light through.
    • 1931, William Faulkner, Sanctuary, Vintage 1993, page 130:
      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.
  3. A shallow place in a stream; a ford.
Translations

Verb

rift (third-person singular simple present rifts, present participle rifting, simple past and past participle rifted)

  1. (intransitive) To form a rift; to split open.
  2. (transitive) To cleave; to rive; to split.
    to rift an oak
    • 1610–1611, William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: Printed by Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, OCLC 606515358, [Act V, (please specify the scene number in lowercase Roman numerals)]:
      to the dread rattling thunder / Have I given fire and rifted Jove's stout oak / With his own bolt
    • 1822, William Wordsworth, "A Jewish Family (in a small valley opposite St. Goar, upon the Rhine)" 9-11,
      The Mother—her thou must have seen, / In spirit, ere she came / To dwell these rifted rocks between.
    • 1894, Ivan Dexter, Talmud: A Strange Narrative of Central Australia, published in serial form in Port Adelaide News and Lefevre's Peninsula Advertiser (SA), Chapter III,
      he stopped rigid as one petrified and gazed through the rifted logs of the raft into the water.

Etymology 2

From Old Norse rypta.

Verb

rift (third-person singular simple present rifts, present participle rifting, simple past and past participle rifted)

  1. (obsolete outside Scotland and northern Britain) To belch.

Etymology 3

Verb

rift (obsolete)

  1. past participle of rive
    (Can we find and add a quotation of Spenser to this entry?)

Anagrams

Old English

Etymology

From Proto-Germanic *riftą, *riftiją, perhaps from *rib- (“to wrap”), from Proto-Germanic *rebʰ- (“to cover; arch over; vault”). Cognate with Old High German peinrefta (“legwear; leggings”), Old Norse ript, ripti (“a kind of cloth; linen jerkin”).

Noun

rift n (nominative plural rift)

  1. A veil; curtain; cloak
  • rifte

Descendants

  • Middle English: rift

Scots

Etymology

From Old Norse rypta.

Verb

rift (third-person singular present rifts, present participle riftin, past riftit, past participle riftit)

  1. to belch, burp
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