| 单词 | rift |
| 例句 | rift noun 1.•a deep rift in the ice:crack, fault, flaw, split, break, breach, fissure, fracture, cleft, crevice, cavity, opening. 2.•the rift between them:breach, division, split | quarrel, squabble, disagreement, falling-out, row, argument, dispute, conflict, feud | estrangement | informal spat, scrap.USAGE riff, rift These two are sometimes confused. Riff is now largely confined to jazz and pop-music contexts. It refers to a melodic phrase, usually repeated and often played in unison by several instruments; sometimes it's a variation on a tune, and it may be either an accompaniment to a solo or the only melodic element—e.g.: “With guitar riffs so rudimentary they seem to have been made up on the spot,. .. the U.K. sextet played with rude ebullience.” ( Chicago Tribune; Sept. 29, 2000.) The term dates only from the mid-twentieth century—and has little discernible relation to the older, mostly obsolete senses of riff (= [1] a string of onions, [2] the diaphragm, or [3] the mange; an itchy rash). That's probably because this particular riff seems to have originated as a truncated form of the musical term refrain. Rift arose in Middle English in the sense “a fissure or divide; a split or crack”—the meaning it still carries—e.g.: “Word out of Washington is that Bondra wants to change teams because of a rift with coach Ron Wilson.” ( Boston Globe; Oct. 1, 2000.) Occasionally the term also refers to the rapids formed by rocks protruding from the bed of a stream. It formerly also meant “a burp”—a sense long obsolete. Although the Oxford English Dictionary records two early-seventeenth-century uses of riff in the obsolete sense “rift, chink,” the modern use of the word in that sense appears to be nothing more than rank word-swapping resulting from sound association—e.g.: “The way he sees it, things aren't bad at all. No riffs [read rifts ] between him and crew chief Todd Parrott.” ( USA Today; May 26, 2000.).Usage notes show additional guidance on finer points of English usage. |
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