Cleaving
adj, noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 The act of one who cleaves, splits, or severs.
"In the luxurious wonder of so rare a dream, I took but little heed of time, and had but little understanding of its flight. But there were days and nights in it; and when the sun was high, and when the rays of lamps were crooked in the running water, I was still afloat, I thought: plashing the slippery walls and houses with the cleavings of the tide, as my black boat, borne upon it, skimmed along the streets."
- 2 The act of one who cleaves, clings, or adheres.
"On all of them they renew their cleavings to God with love and delight."
- 1 present participle and gerund of cleave form-of, gerund, participle, present
"The silence of a summer night is now sleeping on its bosom, where the bright stars are mirrored, as if in its depths they had another home and another heaven. A spirit, cleaving air midway between the two, might have paused to ask which was sea, and which was sky."
- 1 That cleaves. not-comparable
"My head blazed with pain. The speed, the cleaving wind, the flailing beams of light from traffic tormented me. And there was the sickly smell too that no night air could clear."
Example
More examples"The silence of a summer night is now sleeping on its bosom, where the bright stars are mirrored, as if in its depths they had another home and another heaven. A spirit, cleaving air midway between the two, might have paused to ask which was sea, and which was sky."
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.