fault line

noun

: something resembling a fault : split, rift

… a major conceptual fault line in foreign policy …

—Morton Kondracke

Examples of fault line in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

One factor contributing the repair delays – but unmentioned by the GAO report – is acknowledgement that the Washington shipyard at Bremerton on Puget Sound is built on a fault line and four of its dry docks are inoperable following an earthquake. — Edmund H. Mahony, Hartford Courant, 7 Sep. 2026

The epicenter near Compton sits directly over the Newport-Inglewood Fault Zone, one of Southern California’s most prominent urban fault lines, running from Culver City southeast through Compton, Long Beach and south into Orange County. — Noah Goldberg, Los Angeles Times, 6 Sep. 2026

The likelihood increased on different fault lines because more time has passed without a major quake since the last study was conducted more than a decade ago. — ABC News, 3 Sep. 2026

Such criticism formed a fault line that ran from the cultural commentary of the ’20s to the outbursts of Beats, folkies, and academics in the ’50s. — Jake Lundberg, The Atlantic, 3 Sep. 2026

Word History

First Known Use

1869, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for fault line

• affine
• airline
• align
• aline
• assign
• baseline
• beamline
• benign
• bloodline
• bovine
• brucine
• byline