Definition of "rift"

rift¹

/ɹɪft/

noun
plural rifts
1. A chasm or fissure.
2. A lack of cohesion; A state of conflict, incompatibility, or emotional distance.
3. A break in the clouds, fog, mist etc., which allows light through.
  Quotations
  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.
  1931, William Faulkner, Sanctuary, Vintage, published 1993, page 130
4. A shallow place in a stream; a ford.
verb
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.
  Quotations
  to the dread rattling thunder / Have I given fire and rifted Jove's stout oak / With his own bolt
  1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act V, (please specify the scene number in lowercase Roman numerals)]
  The Mother—her thou must have seen, / In spirit, ere she came / To dwell these rifted rocks between.
  1822, William Wordsworth, A Jewish Family (in a small valley opposite St. Goar, upon the Rhine)‎, lines 9–11
  he stopped rigid as one petrified and gazed through the rifted logs of the raft into the water.
  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

rift²

/ɹɪft/

verb
third-person singular simple present rifts, present participle rifting, simple past and past participle rifted
1. (obsolete outside Scotland and northern UK) To belch.

rift³

/ɹɪft/

verb
1. past participle of rive

Definition of "rift"

rift1

noun

Quotations

verb

Quotations

rift2

verb

rift3

verb

rift¹

rift²

rift³