horst

From German Horst (“heap”).

• IPA^(key): /hɔːst/

• Audio (Southern England):

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• Rhymes: -ɔːst
• Homophone: horsed

horst (plural horsts)

1. (geology) A block of the Earth's crust, bounded by faults, that has been raised relative to the surrounding area.
   • 1927, George Rogers Mansfield, Geography, Geology, and Mineral Resources of Part of Southeastern Idaho, U. S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 152, page 390:

     The classic example has been the Rhine Valley graben with the Vosges Mountains and the Schwarzwald as adjacent horsts.

   • 1963, F. Geukens, S. D. Bowers (translator), Geology of the Arabian Peninsula: Yemen, U. S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 560-B, page B19,

     Innumerable faults, in fact, cut through the country, many bounding secondary grabens and horsts.

   • 1968, Anthony Burgess, Enderby Outside, page 83:

     Your body is a horst and mine a graben, because horst is the opposite of graben.

   • 2011, James Petersen, Dorothy Sack, Robert Gabler, Physical Geography, 10th edition, page 393:

     Horsts and grabens are rock structural features that are identified by the nature of the offset of rock units along normal faults; topographically, horsts form mountain ranges and grabens form basins.

• (antonym(s) of “area of earth's surface raised relative to surrounding land”): graben

• Stohr, trosh, hotṛs, Roths, thors, Stroh, Short, hotrs, short

From Middle Dutch horst, from Old Dutch *hurst, from Proto-West Germanic *hursti. Cognate with English horst and German Horst (“horst; eyrie”).

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horst f (plural horsten, diminutive horstje n)

1. (geology) an area of the earth's surface which is raised relative to surrounding land; a horst
2. an elevated land overgrown with shrub
3. a nest of a bird of prey; an eyrie

- toponyms:

horst m (plural horsts)

1. horst

• “horst”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.