fracture zone

American

[frak-cher zohn] / ˈfræk tʃər ˌzoʊn /

noun

Geology, Oceanography.

a long, narrow rift on the ocean floor, separating areas of differing depth: where such a zone crosses a mid-ocean ridge, it displaces the ridge by faulting.

Etymology

Origin of fracture zone

First recorded in 1960–65

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

If you were to take a boat into the middle of the Pacific Ocean, you would eventually stumble into a submarine fracture zone that is twice the size of India at roughly six million square kilometers.

From Salon

The discovery was made as part of the Voyage to the Ridge 2022 expedition, which is exploring and mapping the “poorly understood deepwater areas of the Charlie-Gibbs Fracture Zone, Mid-Atlantic Ridge, and Azores Plateau.”

From Seattle Times

Although the ice directly behind the mountain still seems stuck, GPS stations placed during the first field season show that slippage along the fracture zone is allowing other ice to maneuver around the mountain, which is likely to speed up the crack up.

From Science Magazine

The activity was recorded about 200 to 250 miles west of Newport in an area called the Blanco Fracture Zone.

From Seattle Times

Timely to repost this great @NWS_PTWC-produced animation of 40 years of recorded earthquakes in the Cascadia region — watch the very busy Blanco Fracture Zone just left of center as the years go by.

From Seattle Times

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023