Drain, Excavation, Fault, Fissure: Origins, Forms, Histories of Words Meaning Valley, Cave

Valleys and caves, as well as human-made features of a similar nature, are known by many different words in English. In the current alphabetic series of such terms, the next examples are drain, drift, dugout, excavation, fault, and fissure.

Drain
The noun drain evolved in the 16th century from the verb drain, which goes back to Old English dreahnian (before 12th century). The word is akin to Old English dryge ("dry").

The original sense of the noun drain is a channel by which a liquid is drained, especially an artificial conduit (1552).

Later, drain also came to denote a natural watercourse that drains a tract of land (1700).

Drift
The noun drift emerged during the 14th century. It is akin to the Old English verb drifan ("to drive," before 12th century).

A nearly horizontal mine passageway driven on, or parallel to, the course of a vein is a drift (1653).

Dugout
The noun dugout developed in the 19th century from the verb dig out ("to unearth, make hollow by digging").

A rough kind of cavelike shelter dug in the ground, usually on a hillside, is a dugout (19th century).

Excavation
The English word excavation emerged in the 17th century from Latin excavation-, a combining form of excavatio ("excavation"), from excavatus, the past participle of excavare ("to excavate"), from ex- ("out of") plus cavare ("to make hollow"), from cavus ("hollow").

The original meaning of excavation is the action of digging out a hollow (c. 1611).

A hollow space in the ground formed by digging or scraping is an excavation (1779).

Fault
Modern English fault comes from Middle English fault (15th century) and faute (13th century), from Middle French faute, from (assumed) Vulgar Latin fallita, from the feminine of fallitus, the past participle of Latin fallere ("to deceive").

A fracture in the crust of the earth accompanied by a displacement of one side of the fracture with respect to the other is a fault (1796).

Fissure
Fissure entered English in the 14th century from Middle French fissure, from Latin fissura, from fissus, the past participle of findere ("to split").

The original meaning of fissure is a cleft, break, or slit in the human body (14th century).

A narrow opening or crack of considerable length and depth caused by some breaking or parting in the earth is a fissure (17th century).
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Encyclopaedia Britannica Ready Reference 2004. CD-ROM. Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2004.

Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. 11th ed. Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 2006.

Merriam-Webster's Geographical Dictionary. 3rd ed. Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 2007.

The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1989.