Definition: Crizzling is the unhappy state wherein one's wildly expensive, irreplaceable 17th-century wineglass is afflicted with a fine network of cracks on its surface. Instead of being brilliantly transparent, crizzled glass gets more dull and opaque with each new crack. (Because this is Art History, I threw "17th-century wineglass" in there as an example, instead of the windshield of a Model T. Both are old glass, true, but one is a bit more on topic than the other.)
Crizzling is caused by some deficiency or instability in the chemical makeup of the glass, where either too much alkali or too little lime was used in the manufacturing. It takes a long time, but eventually the salt leaches away, chemical chain reactions occur and the glass deteriorates. Crizzled glass is said to be "sick", or "diseased", and the prognosis is nearly always terminal: broken glass.
Also Known As: crisseling, scissling, crackling, crazing
