cleft

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /klɛft/
• Rhymes: -ɛft

Etymology 1

(deprecated template usage)

From Middle English clift, from Old English ġeclyft, from Proto-Germanic *(ga)kluftiz. Compare Dutch klucht (“chaotic”), Swedish klyft (“cave, den”) cave, den, German Kluft. See cleave.

Noun

cleft (plural clefts)

1. An opening, fissure, or V-shaped indentation made by or as if by splitting.
   • 1855, Robert Browning, “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came”, XXVI:

     Then came some palsied oak, a cleft in him / Like a distorted mouth that splits its rim / Gaping at death, and dies while it recoils.

2. A piece made by splitting.

   a cleft of wood

3. A disease of horses; a crack on the band of the pastern.

Derived terms

• anal cleft
• cleft chin
• cleft foot
• cleftgraft
• cleft grafting
• cleft lip
• cleft of Venus
• cleft palate
• cleft sentence
• cleft stick
• gluteal cleft
• intergluteal cleft
• natal cleft
• noncleft
• pseudocleft
• pudendal cleft
• pudendal cleft
• synaptic cleft
• uncleft

 

Related terms

• cleavage
• cleave
• cleaver
• cloven

 

Translations

opening made or as if made by splitting

• Bulgarian: цепнатина (bg) f (cepnatina), цепка (bg) f (cepka)
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 裂縫／裂缝 (zh) (lièfèng), 裂缝 (zh) (lièfèng)

• Danish: revne c, spalte (da)
• Dutch: spleet (nl) f, kloof (nl) f
• Finnish: lovi (fi)
• French: fissure (fr) f
• Galician: fenda f
• German: Spalte (de) f, Riß (de) m
• Greek:

  Ancient Greek: ῥωχμός m (rhōkhmós)

• Hebrew: שסע (he) m, בקע (he) m
• Hungarian: hasadék (hu)
• Italian: fessura (it)
• (deprecated template usage) {{trans-mid}}
• Japanese: 裂け目 (さけめ, sakeme), 割れ目 (われめ, wareme)
• Korean: 골 (ko) (gol), 샅 (ko) (sat)
• Maori: hakono (of rock/in rock)
• Norwegian: revne (no), spalte (no)
• Occitan: fracha (oc) f, fendascla f, fendilha (oc) f, ascladura f
• Polish: szczelina (pl) f
• Portuguese: rachadura (pt) f, fissura f, partido (pt) m
• Russian: расще́лина (ru) f (rasščélina), тре́щина (ru) f (tréščina), рассе́лина (ru) f (rassélina)
• Serbo-Croatian:

  Cyrillic: пукотина f

  Roman: pukotina (sh) f

• Spanish: hendidura (es) f
• Swedish: klyfta (sv) c, spricka (sv), rämna (sv)
• Turkish: yarık (tr)
• Zazaki: qeliş

See also

• dimple

Verb

cleft (third-person singular simple present clefts, present participle clefting, simple past and past participle clefted)

1. (linguistics) 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."
   • 1983, John Haiman, Pamela Munro, editors, Switch-reference and Universal Grammar: Proceedings of a Symposium on Switch Reference and Universal Grammar, Winnipeg, May 1981:

     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.

   • 2002, Claire Lefebvre, A Grammar of Fongbe, page 521:

     When the affected object is clefted, the clefted constituent may be assigned a contrastive reading on the event denoted by the clause, as is shown in (62).

   • 2013, Katharina Hartmann, Cleft Structures, page 270:

     The strategy the language employs is to cleft the clause containing the wh-phrase, as exemplified in (3) […]

Related terms

• clefting
• cleft sentence

Etymology 2

Verb

cleft

1. simple past and past participle of cleave

Adjective

cleft (not comparable)

1. split, divided, or partially divided into two.

   Synonym: cloven

Translations

Split, divided, or partially divided into two

• Latin: bifidus
• Maori: tararua
• (deprecated template usage) {{trans-mid}}
• Norwegian: kløyve (no)