different between crevasse vs trough

English

Etymology

From French crevasse. Doublet of crevice.

Pronunciation

• Rhymes: -æs
• IPA^(key): /k???væs/

Noun

crevasse (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.
   • 2010, Scott R. Riley, A Lost Hero Found (page 111)

     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.

4. (figuratively) A discontinuity or “gap” between the accounted variables and an observed outcome.
   • 1954: Gilbert Ryle, Dilemmas: The Tarner Lectures, 1953, dilemma vii: Perception, page 105 (The Syndics of the Cambridge University Press)

     […] 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.

Translations

Verb

crevasse (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.

French

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /k??.vas/
• Rhymes: -as

Etymology 1

Old French crevace, crever +? -asse

Noun

crevasse f (plural crevasses)

1. crevasse

Etymology 2

Inflected forms

Verb

crevasse

1. first-person singular imperfect subjunctive of crever

Further reading

• “crevasse” in Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

Portuguese

Alternative forms

• crevassa (dated)

Noun

crevasse f (plural crevasses)

1. (glaciology) crevasse (a crack or fissure in a glacier or snow field)

English

Etymology

From Middle English trough, trowgh, trow, trou?, trogh, from Old English troh, trog (“a trough, tub, basin, vessel for containing liquids or other materials”), from Proto-Germanic *trug?, *trugaz (compare West Frisian trôch, Dutch trog, German Trog, Swedish tråg), from Proto-Indo-European *dru-kó (compare Middle Irish drochta (“wooden basin”), Old Armenian ?????? (targal, “ladle, spoon”), enlargement of *dóru (“tree”)). More at tree.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /t??f/

• (US) enPR: trôf, IPA^(key): /t??f/
• (US, cot–caught merger, Canada) enPR: tr?f, IPA^(key): /t??f/
• (US dialectal) enPR: trôth, IPA^(key): /t???/; (cot–caught merger) IPA^(key): /t???/
• Rhymes: -?f

Noun

trough (plural troughs)

1. A long, narrow container, open on top, for feeding or watering animals.

   One of Hank's chores was to slop the pigs' trough each morning and evening.

2. Any similarly shaped container.
   • 1976, Frederick Bentham, The art of stage lighting (page 233)

     It just clips on the front of the stage without any special trough, has no great power and occupies only one dimmer, […]

   1. (Australia, New Zealand) A rectangular container used for washing or rinsing clothes.

      Ernest threw his paint brushes into a kind of trough he had fashioned from sheet metal that he kept in the sink.

3. A short, narrow canal designed to hold water until it drains or evaporates.

   There was a small trough that the sump pump emptied into; it was filled with mosquito larvae.

4. (Canada) A gutter under the eaves of a building; an eaves trough.

   The troughs were filled with leaves and needed clearing.

5. (agriculture, Australia, New Zealand) A channel for conveying water or other farm liquids (such as milk) from place to place by gravity; any ‘U’ or ‘V’ cross-sectioned irrigation channel.
6. A long, narrow depression between waves or ridges; the low portion of a wave cycle.

   The buoy bobbed between the crests and troughs of the waves moving across the bay.

   The neurologist pointed to a troubling trough in the pattern of his brain-waves.

7. (meteorology) A linear atmospheric depression associated with a weather front.

Synonyms

• manger (container for feeding animals)

Derived terms

• water trough

Translations

Verb

trough (third-person singular simple present troughs, present participle troughing, simple past and past participle troughed)

1. To eat in a vulgar style, as if from a trough.

   He troughed his way through three meat pies.

References

• Oxford English Dictionary Online

See also

• crib
• ditch
• trench

Anagrams

• Rought, rought