[f. prec. sb.]
1. trans. To make a fissure or fissures in; to cleave, split.
1656. Ridgley, Pract. Physick, 173. When the inward place is Fissured, the outward remaining unhurt.
1676. [see FISSURE sb. 2].
1841. Lever, C. O’Malley, xlvii. The French cannon had fissured the building from top to bottom, and it seemed only awaiting the slightest impulse to crumble into ruin.
1863. Lyell, Antiq. Man, xi. (ed. 3), 202. By that convulsion the region around Natchez was rudely shaken and much fissured.
1869. Phillips, Vesuv., viii. 237. Whether the rise and fall were sudden or gradual, there is no reason to doubt that the strata would be fissured and displaced.
2. intr. To break into, or open in, fissures; to become cleft or split.
Hence Fissuring vbl. sb. and ppl. a.
1830. Lyell, Princ. Geol., I. 419. It appears evident that a great part of the rending and fissuring of the ground was the effect of a violent motion from below upwards.
1859. R. B. Todd, The Cyclopædia of Anatomy and Physiology, V. 69/2. The peculiar process of fissuring or segmentation which follows the disappearance of the germinal vesicle from its central part in the fecundated egg.
1863. G. P. Scrope, Volcanos, 47. The fissuring effect upon solid rocks will be determined chiefly by their mechanical structure.
