# cleft

Pronunciation: US say "KLEFT" /klɛft/; UK

## Noun

1. An opening, fissure, or V-shaped indentation formed by splitting, or looking as though it had been.
   - Simple: A crack, opening or V-shaped dent, as if something had split there.
   - _The hikers squeezed through a narrow cleft in the cliff to reach the hidden valley._
   - _Ferns grew thick in the shady clefts between the boulders._
4. A piece produced by splitting something, such as a length of split wood.
   - Simple: A piece that has been split off something bigger.
   - _She fed a cleft of seasoned oak into the stove and closed the door._
   - _The old fence was built from clefts of chestnut rather than sawn boards._

## Adjective

2. Split or divided into two, either completely or in part.
   - Simple: Split into two parts, or partly split.
   - _Surgeons repaired the baby's cleft lip when she was a few months old._
   - _The leaves are deeply cleft, so each one looks almost like two separate blades._

## Verb

3. Past tense and past participle of cleave. — simple past and past participle of cleave
   - Simple: Past tense and past participle of cleave. Use it for splitting or cutting something in the past.
   - _The plow cleft the dark soil in long, straight rows._
   - _The great rock had been cleft by centuries of freezing water._

## Other meanings

- (verb) In linguistics, to separate a prominent part of a clause from the rest of the clause it belongs to, so that it stands apart.
- (noun) A disease of horses marked by a crack on the band of the pastern.

## Origin

From Middle English clift, from Old English ġeclyft, going back through Proto-West Germanic *klufti to Proto-Germanic *kluftiz; it is equivalent to cleave plus the suffix -t (“-th”). Compare Dutch klucht (“coarse comedy”), Swedish klyft (“cave, den”) and German Kluft.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/cleft (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).