Synonyms:
fissure
Meaning: break into fissures or fine cracks
Usage examples
Beneath my head the others are dragged down Who have preceded me in simony, Flattened along the fissure of the rock.
Which will be more strongly altered, the rocks about a closed dike in which lava began to cool as soon as it filled the fissure, or the rocks about a dike which opened on the surface and through which the molten rock flowed for some time?
The retina, or expansion of the optic nerve, is most sensitive to the stimulus of light; hence, a well-marked ciliary muscle contracts the pupil to a mere vertical fissure during the day, while in the dark, the pupil dilates enormously, and lets in as much light as possible.
Now fissures, wherever they occur, form the trunk channels of the underground circulation. Water descends from the surface along these rifts; it moves laterally from either side to the fissure plane, just as ground water seeps through the surrounding rocks from every direction to a well; and it ascends through these natural water ways as in an artesian well, whenever they intersect an aquifer in which water is under hydrostatic pressure.