cleft
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cleft¹
- /ˈklɛft/
- [ˈkʰl̥ɛft]
Rhymes with -ɛft
Where it comes from
From Middle English clift, from Old English ġeclyft, from Proto-West Germanic *klufti, from Proto-Germanic *kluftiz, equivalent to cleave + -t (“-th”). Compare Dutch klucht (“coarse comedy”), Swedish klyft (“cave, den”), German Kluft. See cleave.
noun clefts
- An opening, fissure, or V-shaped indentation made by or as if by splitting. The river flows through a cleft in the mountains.
- A piece made by splitting. a cleft of wood
- A disease of horses; a crack on the band of the pastern.
verb clefts · clefting · clefted
- To syntactically separate a prominent constituent from the rest of the clause that concerns it, such as threat in "The threat which I saw but which he didn't see, was his downfall." This may be so because in most languages the most natural clefting involves NP's, and it is in fact hard in most languages to cleft the verb, although some — notably Kwa languages in West-Africa — allow such clefting.
cleft²
- /ˈklɛft/
- [ˈkʰl̥ɛft]
Rhymes with -ɛft
verb
- simple past and past participle of cleave
adjective
- split, divided, or partially divided into two.
