Earth's crust
6
3.5
- noun
- /ɜrθs krʌst/
- Specialized
:
corteza terrestre
- The Earth's crust is a vital component of our planet, providing the surface on which we live.
- element in the Earth's crust
Examples
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So titanium, the ninth most abundant element in Earth's crust, is the darling of modern engineering.
Academic text (2002) -
There's still roughly a trillion barrels worth of oil in the Earth's crust.
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The Earth's crust goes down about 10 or 20 km.
Academic text (1993) -
The Earth's crust is destabilizing.
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I also saw seismographs that showed what movements were going on under the Earth's crust.
Academic text (1990) -
The geologists are also excited about the life forms they may find buried deep in the Earth's crust.
Blog text (19) -
The Earth's crust has begun to shift, Dr. Helmsley.
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The seismographic data has revealed a vast geological anomaly deep within the Earth's crust.
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Aluminum is the third most abundant element in the Earth's crust; it is a major component of clays in soil.
Academic text (2000) -
Here for the past 40,000 years, a deep fissure in the Earth's crust has allowed oily tar and methane to bubble up to the surface from far underground, evidence of the ceaseless activity below our very feet.
Synonyms
47
4.9
The hard outer layer of the Earth that makes continents and ocean floors
Surface Forms
Morphology
Earth's + crust
The phrase is a simple possessive noun phrase where the meaning is directly composed from 'Earth' (the planet) and 'crust' (the outer solid layer); together they straightforwardly denote the planet's outermost solid layer. This compositional pattern is cross-linguistically common and follows standard English noun-possessor + noun structure, so a B1 learner who knows both words will readily understand it.
Etymology
Earth's crust takes its image from food: like the hard top of a loaf of bread or a pie, the crust is the thin, outer part you can see and touch. So Earth's crust means the hard 'outer layer' of the planet, the part we live on.