Word Confusion: Rift versus Rive

Plural for the noun: rifts
Gerund: rifting

Third person present verb: rifts
Past tense: rifted
Past participle: rifted [obsolete] Present participle: rifting

Plural for the noun: rives
Gerund: riving

Third person present verb: rives
Past tense: rived, rove, rave
Past participle: rived, riven, rift [obsolete] Present participle: riving

• Fissure
• Cleft
• Chink
• Crevasse

An open space, as in a forest or cloud mass, or a clear interval

A serious break in friendly relations

A difference in opinion, belief, or interest that causes such a break in friendly relations

[Geology] A major fault separating blocks of the earth’s surface

The plane or direction along which a log or mass of granite can most easily be split

Wood or a piece of wood that has been split radially from a log

[US] A shallow or rocky part in a stream ²

• Ford

[US] The backwash from a wave that has just broken on a beach

Verb:
[Obsolete except in Scotland and northern UK] To belch ²

Verb, intransitive:
[Geology] Break apart or become separated through faulting caused by plate tectonics ¹

To cleave, rive, or split

Verb, transitive:
[Geology] Cause to break away through faulting caused by plate tectonics ¹

• A rent
• A rift

Verb, intransitive:
[Archaic; of wood or stone] Split, break apart, rent, or crack

Verb, transitive:
[Literary; usually be riven] Split or tear apart violently

• [Archaic] Split or crack (wood or stone)
• To split (wood) radially from a log
• Cleave

To tear or rend apart

To pierce or cleave with a weapon

To rend, harrow, or distress (the feelings, heart, etc.)

[Woodworking] To use a technique of splitting or sawing wood radially from a log

There was a rift between the siblings.

He saw the sun through a rift in the clouds.

They hope to heal the rift with their father.

That rift looks to be a good place to aim your ax.

It’s late in the season, and we’ll need to portage around the rifts just before Shoals Gap.

“It was then that Juag called my attention to the rift in the shoreline which I had thought either a bay or the mouth of a great river” (Burroughs).

Verb, intransitive:
John, that old oak needs rifting.

My father used to rift after having a fine meal.

Verb, transitive:
The hills were rifted by the earthquake.

Yes, we have seen the wrecked cars and the factories rifting smoke and the blur of speedy automobiles crowding highways.

The tornado created a rive between living room and bedrooms.

Our opposing opinions have caused a rive between us.

Verb, intransitive:
I started to chop furiously, the dry wood riving and splintering under the axe.

They were stones that rive easily.

“The varlet at his plaint was grieu’d so sore, / That his deepe wounded hart in two did riue” (Spenser).

Freestone rives, splits, and breaks in any direction.

Verb, transitive:
The party was riven by disagreements over Europe.

He was riven with guilt.

The wood was riven with deep cracks.

“I have seen tempests, when the scolding winds / Have rived the knotty oaks” (Shakespeare).

“And therwith she toke the swerd from her loue that lay ded and fylle to the ground in a swowne / And whan she aroos she made grete dole out of mesure / the whiche sorowe greued Balyn passyngly sore / and he wente vnto her for to haue taken the swerd oute of her h?d butsodenly she sette the pomell to the ground / and rofe her self thorow the body” (Malory).

To rive clapboards or shingles from the green tree is now a lost art” (Axemanship).

1. Middle English rift is of North Germanic origin; akin to the Danish rift, the Norwegian Bokmål rift meaning breach, and the Old Norse rífa meaning to tear.
2. From the Old Norse rypta and related to the Icelandic ropa meaning to belch.

Cognate with the Danish rive meaning to tear, the Old Frisian rīva meaning to tear, the Old English ārǣfan meaning to let loose, unwrap, the Old Norse ript meaning breach of contract, rift, the Norwegian Bokmål rive meaning to tear, and the Albanian rrip meaning belt, rope.