cleaving

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English

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Pronunciation

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Verb

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cleaving

  1. present participle and gerund of cleave
    • 1832, Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Heath's Book of Beauty, 1833, The Enchantress, page 1:
      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.

Adjective

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cleaving (not comparable)

  1. That cleaves

Noun

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cleaving (plural cleavings)

  1. The act of one who cleaves, splits, or severs.
    • 2010, Greg Kucich, Keats, Shelley, and Romantic Spenserianism, page 273:
      Many of Spenser's readers today find the cleavings and reunifications of Redcrosse and Una presenting a psychodrama of mental fragmentation []
  2. The act of one who cleaves, clings, or adheres.
    • 1813, John Owen, The grace and duty of being spiritually minded:
      On all of them they renew their cleavings to God with love and delight.

Derived terms

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