rift
/ɹɪft/
rift noun: a chasm or fissure. Also the past participle of rive.
Noun
rift (plural rifts)
- A chasm or fissure.
- The Grand Canyon is a rift in the Earth's surface, but is smaller than some of the undersea ones.
- Where ashes are heaped in drifts / Over vineyard and field and town, / Whenever he starts and lifts / His head through the blackened rifts / Of the crags that keep him down1863, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Enceladus”, in Birds of Passage
- A lack of cohesion; a state of conflict, incompatibility, or emotional distance.
- My marriage is in trouble: the fight created a rift between us and we can't reconnect.
- Elon Musk, the billionaire tech entrepreneur, has opened a new rift with Donald Trump by denouncing the US president’s tax and spending bill as a “disgusting abomination”.2025 June 3, David Smith, “Elon Musk calls Trump’s ‘big, beautiful’ tax bill a ‘disgusting abomination’”, in The Guardian, →ISSN
- A break in the clouds, fog, mist etc., which allows light through.
- I have but one rift in the darkness, that is that I have injured no one save myself by my folly, and that the extent of that folly you will never learn.1931, William Faulkner, Sanctuary, Vintage, published 1993, page 130
- A shallow place in a stream; a ford.
Verb (1)
rift (third-person singular simple present rifts, present participle rifting, simple past and past participle rifted)
- To form a rift; to split open.
- To cleave; to rive; to split.
- to rift an oak
- to the dread rattling thunder / Have I given fire and rifted Jove's stout oak / With his own bolt1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published...
Verb (2)
rift (third-person singular simple present rifts, present participle rifting, simple past and past participle rifted)
- To belch.
Also used as
rift is also the past participle of rive.
rift meaning in Hindi, Urdu and Nepali
rift in Hindi
- chasm or fissure
- दरार darār, अनुपाट anupāṭ, विभ्रंश vibhrañś, फटन phaṭan
rift in Urdu
- رفٹنگ
rift in Nepali
- रिफ्टिङ, रिफ्टिङ्ग
Examples of rift in a sentence
- As far as the eye can reach is a sea of green tree tops, with occasionally a deep rift where there is a chasm.1897, Bram Stoker, Dracula, Westminster [London]: Archibald Constable and Company, […], →OCLC:
- The Mother—her thou must have seen, / In spirit, ere she came / To dwell these rifted rocks between.1822, William Wordsworth, A Jewish Family (in a small valley opposite St. Goar, upon the Rhine), lines 9–11:
Forms of rift
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | rifts |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | rifts |
| present participle | rifting |
| past participle | rifted |
| past | rifted |
Origin of rift
From Middle English rift, of North Germanic origin; akin to Danish rift, Norwegian Bokmål rift (“breach”), Old Norse rífa (“to tear”). More at rive.
From Old Norse rypta.
Words formed from rift
Phrases with rift
Words that rhyme with rift
Questions about rift
- What does rift mean?
- Rift means a chasm or fissure.
- What is rift in Hindi?
- Rift in Hindi is दरार (darār), अनुपाट (anupāṭ), विभ्रंश (vibhrañś). See Rift meaning in Hindi.
- How do you use rift in a sentence?
- As far as the eye can reach is a sea of green tree tops, with occasionally a deep rift where there is a chasm.
- What part of speech is rift?
- Rift can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce rift?
- Rift is pronounced /ɹɪft/.
- What is the plural of rift?
- The plural of rift is rifts.
Words near rift in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: rift (page history and authors); rift (Urdu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); rift (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-rift.oga.
Cite this entry: “rift.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/rift. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.