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/

crevice (plural crevices)

1. A narrow crack or fissure, as in a rock or wall.
   • Tennyson

     The mouse, / Behind the moldering wainscot, shrieked, / Or from the crevice peered about.

   • William Butler Yeats

     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.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Sir H. Wotton to this entry?)

• 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 Frankish *krebitja (“crayfish”), diminutive of *krebit (“crab”), from Proto-Germanic *krabitaz (“crab, cancer”), from Proto-Indo-European *grebʰ-, *gerebʰ- (“to scratch, crawl”). Akin to Old High German krebiz (“edible crustacean, crab”) (German Krebs (“crab”)), 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)