The Etymology of Crevasse
English picked up the same French word twice, five centuries apart, and gave the two borrowings different jobs. The first arrival, in the 1300s, was crevice, settled into English as a general word for any narrow crack — in a wall, a rock, a floorboard. The second, crevasse, arrived in 1814 just as Alpine mountaineering was becoming a fashionable pastime; English speakers needed a word specifically for the deep, often hidden cracks that open in glaciers, and they re-borrowed the modern French form rather than re-purposing the older crevice. Both descend from Latin crepare, to crack or burst, an onomatopoeic verb that also gave Italian crepare (to crack, vulgarly to die) and Spanish quebrar (to break). Crevasse expanded its remit later in the 19th century to include large fissures in levees and riverbanks, particularly along the Mississippi.