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CREVASSE
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CREVASSE, a French word used in two senses. (1) In French Switzerland, and thence universally in high mountain regions, it designates a fissure in a glacier caused by gigantic cracks in the ice-mass, sometimes of great depth, into which climbers frequently fall through a light bridge of snow which conceals the crevasse. (2) Adopted from the French of Louisiana, it signifies locally a wide crack or breach in the bank of a canal or river, and particularly of the " levee " of the Mississippi.