Definition of "crevasse"

crevasse

/kɹəˈvæs/

noun
plural crevasses
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.
  Quotations
  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. (figuratively) A discontinuity or “gap” between the accounted variables and an observed outcome.
  Quotations
  […] 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
third-person singular simple present crevasses, present participle crevassing, simple past and past participle crevassed
1. (intransitive) To form crevasses.
2. (transitive) To fissure with crevasses.