cleaving

Pluralcleavings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of cleave.

   Swallows dipped low over the field, cleaving the warm evening air.

   Cleaving a stone along its grain takes patience and a steady hand.

   Note

   Two opposite verbs meet in this form, and the word after it tells you which. The splitting verb takes a direct object (cleaving the air, cleaving a stone along its grain); the rarer clinging verb needs to or unto (cleaving to old habits). Without the preposition the participle divides; with it, the participle holds fast.

2. 2
   act of splittingnouncountable or uncountable

   The act of splitting something or of severing one part from another.

   The cleaving of the trunk took three hard swings of the ax.

   Historians trace the party's repeated cleavings into rival camps to one bitter election.

   Similarsplitting, split, division

3. 3
   that cutsadjective

   That splits or cuts through something, or that clings to it.

   A single cleaving stroke of the ax opened the trunk from end to end.

   The ship's cleaving prow threw white spray to either side.

   Similarsplitting, cutting

4. 4
   clingingnoununcountable

   The act of clinging, adhering, or holding fast to someone or something.

   Her steady cleaving to her childhood faith surprised her college friends.

   The village's cleaving to old customs kept it unchanged for a century.

   Similaradherence, attachment, devotion, loyalty

   Note

   Here the noun keeps the clinging verb's to, so a cleaving is always a cleaving to someone or something, and it can be plural. Its objects are attachments rather than surfaces: God for John Owen, who writes of believers who "renew their cleavings to God," a childhood faith, a village's old customs. Without to a reader will hear the noun for splitting instead.

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