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Fine Dictionary

rift

rɪft
WordNet
  1. (n) rift
    a personal or social separation (as between opposing factions) "they hoped to avoid a break in relations"
  2. (n) rift
    a narrow fissure in rock
  3. (n) rift
    a gap between cloud masses "the sun shone through a rift in the clouds"
Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary
  1. Rift
    A shallow place in a stream; a ford.
  2. Rift
    An opening made by riving or splitting; a cleft; a fissure.
  3. Rift
    To belch.
  4. Rift
    To burst open; to split. "Timber . . . not apt to rif with ordnance."
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
  1. (n) rift
    An opening made by riving or splitting; a fissure; a cleft or crevice; a chink.
  2. (n) rift
    A riving or splitting; a shattering.
  3. rift
    To rive; cleave; split.
  4. rift
    To make or effect by cleavage.
  5. rift
    To burst open; split.
  6. rift
    Split; specifically, following the general direction of the splitting or checking: said of a log: as, rift pine boards. Compare quartered, 4.
  7. (n) rift
    A veil; a curtain.
  8. rift
    To belch.
  9. (n) rift
    A shallow place in a stream; a fording-place; also, rough water indicating submerged rocks.
  10. (n) rift
    In wood-working, a saw in which the cutting-teeth are placed at the ends of radial arms instead of upon the rim of a disk.
  11. (n) rift
    In geology, one of the principal cleavages or planes of weakness in building-stone, as quarried, of which the quarrymen take advantage. The two others, commonly occurring at right angles with it and with one another, are called the cut-off and the lift.
Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary
  1. (n) Rift
    rift an opening split in anything: a fissure: a veil: a fording-place
  2. (v.t) Rift
    to rive: to cleave
  3. (v.i) Rift
    to split: to burst open
Quotations
Gerald Kersh
Now, you mummy's darlings, get a rift on them boots. Definitely shine em, my little curly-headed lambs, for in our mob, war or no war, you die with clean boots on.
Gerald Kersh
Robert Louis Stevenson
The little rift between the sexes is astonishingly widened by simply teaching one set of catchwords to the girls and another to the boys.
Robert Louis Stevenson
Etymology

Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary Dan. rift, fr. rieve, to rend. See Rive

Usage in the news

Dividing the West Bank, and Deepening a Rift. nytimes.com

Young women walking to a food relief center in the drought-stricken village of Nadapal, Rift Valley province, Kenya, October 2, 2009. nybooks.com

We left Nairobi on Friday morning for Lake Naivasha region and a stop off at the a beautiful viewpoint in the Rift Valley. agweb.com

The Texas Farm Bureau's annual convention this week in Waco exposed a rift among members about the future of government ethanol mandates. acotrib.com

'Takes a village' philosophy over caring for feral cats causing rifts. denverpost.com

Don't expect to find a rift form within Denver duo Axe Murder Boyz. okgazette.com

Quarterback denies having rift with coordinator. krdo.com

All of Hank Williams Jr.'s rowdy lyrics inspired by his public rift with former partner ESPN came out today in the form of the country star's new album "Old School, New Rules," his first in three years. al.com

Women work to combat extremism by closing rift between Americans and Pakistanis. globalpost.com

Franco- German rift threatens EU banking union. courant.com

The internal rifts within the Republican party are getting more frequent and more serious. texasmonthly.com

For years it created a significant rift between us. travelandleisure.com

Quorum Shortfall Shows Deep Rift In Alaska GOP. ktuu.com

A Rift Runs Through It. governing.com

Naomi Benaron has already won the Bellwether Prize for Running the Rift , a novel about a boy who grows up during the ethnic conflict in Rwanda and the 1994 genocide. blog.schoollibraryjournal.com

Usage in scientific papers

For this direction, the results from this work (Fig. 20) show two signi ficant increases of extinction, one within the first few hundred parsecs, which would be associated with the Aquila Rift.
High Spatial Resolution Galactic 3D Extinction Mapping with IPHAS

The Rift is at a distance of ∼ 200 pc (Dame et al. 1987), with the extinction risˇCernis & Barta ˇsi ¯ut ˙e 2003).
High Spatial Resolution Galactic 3D Extinction Mapping with IPHAS

It is clear, however, that the Marshall et al. (2006) modelling does not take into account the more local Aquila Rift.
High Spatial Resolution Galactic 3D Extinction Mapping with IPHAS

L492, CB130 — Straiˇzys et al. (2003) investigate the distance dependence of the interstellar extinction in the direction of the Aquila Rift.
Spitzer and HHT observations of starless cores: masses and environments

Finally, in sec. 2.5.2 we introduce a d rift of the black hole and explore the both electric and magnetic fields emerging in this general setup.
Transition from regular to chaotic motion in black hole magnetospheres

Usage in literature

His narrow eyes lay level with a rift in the group of rocks that hid him completely from view. "The Furnace of Gold" by Philip Verrill Mighels

It is our dear Edith's desire to slip into the charmed circle through the rift that the Rodneys make. "The Husbands of Edith" by George Barr McCutcheon

So silent, yet rapid, was the motion of Oonomoo, that his figure flitted through the rifts in the wood like a shadow. "Oonomoo the Huron" by Edward S. Ellis

A rift in the fog disclosed a portion of the trestle bridge. "Injun and Whitey to the Rescue" by William S. Hart

The sun drooped low, and threw long swords of light through rifts in the dull grey veil. "The Romance of the Coast" by James Runciman

In that year her near neighbor, Japan, made the first rift in the enclosing shell. "A Short History of Russia" by Mary Platt Parmele

Presently, however, the storm abated, and through a rift in the clouds they perceived land and made for it. "The First Discovery of Australia and New Guinea" by George Collingridge

The storm was passing; by the time when they reached the sea-side there were rifts of clear light in the sky above them. "The Disentanglers" by Andrew Lang

But this social rift was not the only rift which was opening amidst the distress and misery of the time. "History of the English People, Volume II (of 8)" by John Richard Green

The rift within the lute was probably busy with household matters above, and no discordant element marred our farewell. "The Argosy" by Various

Usage in poetry
Alexis calls me cruel;
The rifted crags that hold
The gathered ice of winter,
He says, are not more cold.
Come, for the night is cold,
The ghostly moonlight fills
Hollow and rift and fold
Of the eerie Ardise hills!
Where the full ray of noon alone
Down the deep valley falls:
Or where the sunbeam never shone
Between its rifted walls:
And now she came to a horrible rift
All in the rock's hard side,
A bleak and blasted oak o'erspread
The cavern yawning wide.
I lay beneath the pine trees,
And looked aloft, where, through
The dusky, clustered tree-tops,
Gleamed rent, gay rifts of blue.
Weary hearts by thee are lifted,
Struggling souls by thee are strengthened,
Clouds of fear asunder rifted,
Truth from falsehood cleansed and sifted,
Lives, like days in summer, lengthened!