Ranked by relevance and common usage.
Keep "cleaving" when the sentence already sounds natural, when a synonym would add unintended emphasis, or when readers need the most familiar wording. A synonym should clarify or sharpen the message, not simply make the sentence look more varied.
If two options seem close, choose the one that best matches the audience and purpose of the sentence.
Choose a synonym only if it keeps the core idea of "cleaving" intact in the sentence you are editing.
Check whether the replacement sounds more formal, casual, emotional, technical, or forceful than the original word.
Read the full sentence after the swap. Keep the synonym only when the sentence becomes clearer or more precise.
Review note: Synonym lists are ranked with lexical data and reviewed for practical writing value. Use the comparison notes, sentence evidence, and source labels together; a high-ranking synonym can still be wrong when the audience, register, or grammar changes.
After choosing a replacement for "cleaving", read the sentence once for meaning and once for rhythm. The best synonym should feel natural in the full sentence, not only accurate in a word list.
If the synonym makes the sentence slower, vaguer, or more dramatic than intended, keep "cleaving" or choose a simpler alternative from the closest-match group.
OpenGloss and ConceptNet supply richer edges like generalizations, collocations, and derivations.
7 total sentences available.
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.
Source: wiktionary
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.
Source: wiktionary
The fight was brutal and intense but soon it became painfully obvious that the fairy could not keep this pace up for much longer. She was beginning to tire. No longer able to attack with each turn and dive, she had to use all of her remaining speed and energy just to dodge pincers. She was on the defensive, and the monster was nowhere near letting up. Her graceful turns and leaps became more and more frantic and less graceful, and the last cleaving strike sent her rolling. She leaped immediately to her feet only to be struck solidly with a sweeping blow from the flat side of the bonecracker’s other crablike claw. Swatted sideways, she flew face-first into a wooden cask at the edge of the well. She crumpled to the floor, her swords sliding from her hands and falling at her side.
Source: wiktionary
That’s worth all the fuss and all the effort, all the sweat and the cleaving wind, the grind of wheels on paviors and the shrill of exaltation that you hold behind your teeth because really, let’s be cool, okay?
Source: wiktionary
Showing 4 of 7 available sentences.
Closest matches include adhere, adhesion, adhesive, attached, cell division.
Compare the replacement against real sentence context. This entry includes sample sentences so you can check tone, grammar, and meaning before swapping words.