Definition of "horst" [horst]

• A mass of the earth's crust that lies between two faults and is higher than the surrounding land. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "A horst is a false hope of victory; nor does it deliver anyone by its great strength."
• "The first fact that we infer from the former existence of such a temperature distribution is the improbability, indeed the impossibility, that anything resembling a rigid obstacle, or deep-seated "horst," can have existed beneath the present surface-level, and opposed the northerly movement of the deep-lying synclines."
• "The weakness of the theory of the "horst" is manifest, however, in many of its other applications; if not, indeed, in all."