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Cleft
Definitions
- 1 split, divided, or partially divided into two. not-comparable
- 1 having one or more indentations reaching nearly to the midrib wordnet
- 2 split or divided wordnet
- 1 An opening, fissure, or V-shaped indentation made by or as if by splitting.
"The river flows through a cleft in the mountains."
- 2 a long narrow cleft wordnet
- 3 A piece made by splitting.
"a cleft of wood"
- 4 a split or indentation in something (as the palate or chin) wordnet
- 5 A disease of horses; a crack on the band of the pastern.
- 1 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."
- 2 simple past and past participle of cleave form-of, participle, past
Etymology
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.
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.
See also for "cleft"
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