different between ditch vs crevasse

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /d?t?/
• Rhymes: -?t?

Etymology 1

From Middle English dich, from Old English d?? (“trench, moat”) from Proto-Germanic *d?kaz (compare Swedish dike, Icelandic díki, West Frisian dyk (“dam”), Dutch dijk (“id.”), German Teich (“pond”)), from Proto-Indo-European *d?eyg?- (“to stick, set up”) (compare Latin f?g? (“to affix, fasten”), Lithuanian diegti (“to prick; plant”), dýgsti (“to geminate, grow”)). Doublet of dike.

Noun

ditch (plural ditches)

1. A trench; a long, shallow indentation, as for irrigation or drainage.

2. (Ireland) A raised bank of earth and the hedgerow on top.
   • c. 1947, Patrick Kavanagh, Stony Grey Soil

     You flung a ditch on my vision

     Of beauty, love and truth.

     O stony grey soil of Monaghan

     You burgled my bank of youth!

   • 2013, Frank McNally, When Anglophone lines get crossed

     The original ditches were created by digging trenches, as boundaries and/or irrigation. But to the English, the ditch is the trench. Whereas in Ireland, the ditch is the raised bank of earth and the hedgerow on top. (As for the trench, where I come from that’s a sheugh).

References

Derived terms

Translations

See also

• fosse
• moat

Verb

ditch (third-person singular simple present ditches, present participle ditching, simple past and past participle ditched)

1. (transitive) To discard or abandon.

2. To deliberately crash-land an airplane on water.

3. (intransitive) To deliberately not attend classes; to play hookey.

4. (intransitive) To dig ditches.

5. (transitive) To dig ditches around.

6. (transitive) To throw into a ditch.

Synonyms

• abandon
• discard
• dump
• jettison
• lose
• shed
• See also Thesaurus:junk

Translations

Etymology 2

From earlier deche, from Middle English dechen, from Old English d?can (“to smear, plaster, daub”). More at deech.

Verb

ditch (third-person singular simple present ditches, present participle ditching, simple past and past participle ditched)

1. Alternative form of deech

Noun

ditch (usually uncountable, plural ditches)

1. Alternative form of deech

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)