Rifted

The area that separates the continental and oceanic crust is called a rifted continental margin; this forms when continents start to break apart and new oceans are formed in between. ❋ Unknown (2008)

When he didn't make brigadier, he was "rifted" (for "reduction in force": the army's way of con'trolling its reserve-officer-corps population). ❋ Mason, Robert (1983)

Behind Mr. Steegman's simple statement are growing strains inside Ms. Merkel's coalition government, which has rifted over how much German taxpayers can be asked to pay for safeguarding the euro. ❋ Bernd Radowitz (2011)

Black Force and The Spout are two such sights when in spate, only visible after negotiating a ghyll on the old Westmorland-Yorkshire border as rifted as the Rishi Ganga Gorge in northern India. ❋ Tony Greenbank (2010)

I've come out of a rifted society, and I'm very, very interested in that idea, that you can take a physical and geological divide, and conceptually close it, and heal, heal people, heal yourself. ❋ Unknown (2009)

I note quite a few of us have rifted over to Twitter recently. ❋ Unknown (2009)

Subsequent movement rifted these later lava fields, causing long, linear valleys bounded by parallel faults. ❋ Unknown (2008)

It would involve a new franchise that rifted off of the comedic and parody opportunities of Jack Bauher, 24, and the “war on terror” rhetoric. ❋ Unknown (2008)

She saw the rifted clouds of glory and the hidden battlements of heaven. ❋ Unknown (2006)

The speaker explained it thus: as the Americas and the Old World rifted apart in distant geological times, the ancestral manatee species got separated and, presto, a vicariance event resulted in speciation. ❋ Darren Naish (2006)

Blaque Jacques Cartier, the riffingest riff-raff that ever rifted a raft on the Seven Seas, or at least sur Le Fleuve. ❋ CC (2008)

Will the ocean move into the rifted Intermountain West before Las Vegas or Los Angeles can steal northern Nevada's groundwater? ❋ Silver Fox (2008)

Palawan (along with the Calamianes and the island of Mindoro) was rifted (below water) from the Asian mainland approximately 32 million years ago, transported through seafloor spreading across the growing South China Sea, added to the growing Philippine Archipelago approximately 17 million years ago, and uplifted above water approximately 5-10 million years ago. ❋ Unknown (2008)

"Will the ocean move into the rifted Intermountain West before Las Vegas or Los Angeles can steal northern Nevada's groundwater?" ❋ Silver Fox (2008)

Upheaved and contorted, rifted and fissured, pierced by dykes of molten matter or worn away over vast areas by aqueous action, the older rocks appeared to bear witness to a state of things far different from that exhibited by the peaceful epoch on which the lot of man has fallen. ❋ Unknown (2007)

So David build a timbered second story for Lucien, so as not to put too great a strain on the old rifted house-walls. ❋ Unknown (2007)

The vine-stems were changing color with the spring; covering the rifted, battered walls of the old house where squalid cracks were spreading in every direction, with fluted columns and knots and bas-reliefs and uncounted masterpieces of I know not what order of architecture, erected by fairy hands. ❋ Unknown (2007)

On either side of the Truckee great sierras rose like walls, castellated, embattled, rifted, skirted and crowned with pines of enormous size, the walls now and then breaking apart to show some snow-slashed peak rising into a heaven of intense, unclouded, sunny blue. ❋ Unknown (2007)

Mindoro (along with Palawan and the Calamianes) was rifted (below water) from the Asian mainland approximately 32 million years ago, transported through seafloor spreading across the growing South China Sea, added to the growing Philippine Archipelago approximately 17 million years ago, and uplifted above water approximately 5-10 million years ago. ❋ Unknown (2007)