strike-slip fault
- noun
- /ˈstraɪkˌslɪp fɔlt/
- Specialized
:
falla de deslizamiento
- California's infamous San Andreas fault is a strike-slip fault where the tectonic plates move horizontally past each other.
Examples
-
The San Andreas was a strike-slip fault, whereas the Sierra Madre was a thrust fault.
Fiction book (1999) -
The East Indian Ocean event was the largest—by a factor of 10—strike-slip earthquake ever recorded (the San Andreas is perhaps the most famous strike-slip fault).
Blog text (21) -
A strike-slip fault occurs when blocks of rock slide horizontally along the fault line, as seen in the Hayward Fault.
-
During the earthquake, the movement along the strike-slip fault caused significant horizontal displacement of the ground.
Synonyms
63
6.1
A crack in the earth's crust where the ground has moved
16
4.7
A crack in the ground where the land moves, often causing earthquakes
1
5.0
A crack in the Earth's crust where rock layers move
Surface Forms
Morphology
strike-slip + fault
Part of the meaning is recoverable: 'slip' (to slide) together with 'fault' (a fracture) suggests movement along a fracture, so a learner will infer sliding along a fault. However, the term 'strike' here has a specialized geological sense (orientation/strike direction) that a B1 learner is unlikely to know, and the precise notion of mainly horizontal motion is technical rather than fully compositional. Therefore the expression is partly transparent but requires domain knowledge to be fully understood.
Etymology
The noun strike-slip fault comes from a simple picture of a crack in the ground where two blocks of rock move side by side. One block appears to strike along the line and the other to slip past it, so the name means 'a fault where the rock moves mainly sideways'.