crevasse

Etymology

From French crevasse. Doublet of crevice.

noun

1. A crack or fissure in a glacier or snowfield; a chasm.
2. (US) A breach in a canal or river bank.
3. (by extension) Any cleft or fissure.
   I moved my left hand to the small of her back, just above her belt-line and stroked the peach fuzz in her crevasse with my fingers. 2010, Scott R. Riley, A Lost Hero Found, page 111
4. (figurative) A discontinuity or “gap” between the accounted variables and an observed outcome.
   […] he laments that he can find no physiological phenomenon answering to his subject’s winning a race, or losing it. Between his terminal output of energy and his victory or defeat there is a mysterious crevasse. Physiology is baffled. 1954: Gilbert Ryle, Dilemmas: The Tarner Lectures, 1953, dilemma vii: Perception, page 105 (The Syndics of the Cambridge University Press)

verb

1. (intransitive) To form crevasses.
2. (transitive) To fissure with crevasses.