forking

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of fork.

   The developers are forking the project to build their own version.

   The mountain path begins forking just past the old bridge.

   Note

   The -ing form serves every sense of the verb fork, from the farmyard to the server room. Most of those senses work with or without an object: a path can be forking, and developers can be forking a project or a repository. Programmers also speak of a process forking a child. The British slang sense, kicking someone in the crotch, always takes an object.

2. 2
   adverb

   A euphemistic substitute for "fucking," used as an intensifier to add emphasis.

   He slammed the door and started yelling about his forking neighbors again.

   What a forking mess this whole project turned out to be.

   Similarfreaking, frigging, flipping, effing

   Note

   A minced oath swaps the taboo word for a harmless near-rhyme, so the emphasis survives while the offense is softened. It sits directly before the word it strengthens, as in a forking mess or his forking neighbors. Like the word it replaces, it never takes more or most. Because it shares its spelling with the everyday participle, the context has to signal the joke.

3. 3
   noununcountable

   The splitting of something into two or more branches or separate paths.

   The forking of the road forced us to choose between two valleys.

   Geologists studied the forking of the ancient river system.

   Similarbranching, divergence, bifurcation, division, splitting

   Oppositeconvergence, merging

   Note

   Unlike the gerund in the verb's -ing form, this noun is countable and takes a plural. You can speak of the forkings of a road, or of a deer's antlers, meaning each point where a line splits. The plural counts the junctions one by one. The singular, as in the forking of a river, names the act of dividing as a whole.

4. 4
   adjective

   Dividing into branches, or crooked and winding in form.

   Lightning sent a forking flash of light across the night sky.

   They followed a forking lane that twisted between the hills.

   Similarwinding, twisting, zigzag, meandering

   Oppositestraight

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