crevice

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

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈkɹɛvɪs/

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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 1008064829, 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.

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 17479433:

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

• crevice in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913
• crevice in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911
• crevice at OneLook Dictionary Search

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

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”).

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

1. crayfish, crawfish

• 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)