horst

plural horsts

1. geographyA block of the Earth's crust, bounded by faults, that has been raised relative to the surrounding area.

   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.

   3 more examples

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

   1927, George Rogers Mansfield, Geography, Geology, and Mineral Resources of Part of Southeastern Idaho, U. S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 152, page 390

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

   1968, Anthony Burgess, Enderby Outside, page 83

   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.

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

plural Horsts

1. A surname.