fault line
16
4.7
- noun
- /fɔlt laɪn/
- Specialized
:
falla
- Social capital that most observers assumed to be fragmented along ethnic and urban-rural fault lines was actually remarkably coherent.
- fault line that divides
- fault lines run
- a new fault line
No, the fault line here runs in a different direction.
- No, the fault line here runs in a different direction.
- A fracture, you've got a crack in the Earth that's static, but a fault line, those rocks are moving with respect to each other under pressure.
- If you build them on fault lines, then it always comes out.
Examples
-
From all of your intel, the deepest fault line is here.
Fiction book (1998) -
There are many old fault lines that one can claim run through the former Yugoslavia.
Academic text (1998) -
No, the fault line here runs in a different direction.
-
Their end of the fault line has not moved yet.
-
Of course this place is built on a fault line.
-
Fault lines, they run throughout the whole continental US.
-
In order to split this rock on the fault line, we're gonna have to drill to 800 feet.
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The fault line is unstable... ...which is why you get earthquakes in California.
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Then you should be able to see the fault lines, which exist Along the edges of the tectonic plate.
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The city is prone to earthquakes because it sits directly on a fault line.
Synonyms
63
6.1
A crack in the earth's crust where the ground has moved
1
5.0
A crack in the Earth's crust where rock layers move
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly compositional: a 'fault line' is simply a 'line' that marks a 'fault' (a tectonic fracture), so the compound’s sense follows straightforwardly from the constituent meanings. This noun–noun formation is a common, cross-linguistic descriptive pattern (e.g. Spanish 'línea de falla'), so a B1 learner who knows both words should be able to infer the MWE’s meaning.
Etymology
The noun fault line comes from the image of a long fault, a crack in the earth, that makes a visible line where the ground has 'moved' or 'broken'. So a fault line means the place where the ground can shift and cause earthquakes.