cleft

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“
With his left hand he held a long stick, cleft at one end, and in the cleft was a letter Come here, Stomp," said Bessie, and as she spoke a wild hope shot across her heart like a meteor across the night: perhaps the letter was from John The dog obeyed her unwillingly enough, for evidently he did not like that Kafir; and when he saw that Stomp was well out of the way the Kafir himself followed.

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Definitions (28)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (5)

  1. verb A past tense and a past participle of cleave1.
  2. adjective Divided; split.
  3. adjective Botany Having indentations that extend about halfway to the center, as in certain leaves.
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Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (17)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (3)

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Examples (50)

  • Jehan got to his feet and ran for the cleft, his fear close behind, shouting and screaming in his brain, and urging him on. —  Analog July, 1974
  • A cleft is a space left in the lip and palate where tissue did not develop while the child was in the womb. —  Best Syndication -
  • After the tour, Orchard Advisor Patrick Schafer demonstrated to the group a very basic grafting technique called the cleft graft. —  The Ukiah Daily Journal Forum
  • Friendly hands placed her in a warm and sunlit cleft, and she lay there, unable to think or move. —  The Stowaway Girl
  • Her thoughts kept reverting to the scene in the cleft, and when she tore them from it and forced them back on him, her conscience awoke and gnawed. —  The Emigrant Trail
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Roget's II Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

Allen's Allen's Synonyms and Antonyms

Used in the same context Used in the Same Context

fissure ·  cranny ·  gully ·  crevasse ·  cleave ·  crag ·  fjord ·  outcrop ·  chasm ·  declivity ·  gulch ·  ledge

Used in the same contextWord Family

cleft:   clove ·  cleave ·  cleaved
Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (3)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Middle English, past participle of cleven, to split; see cleave1. N., from Middle English, alteration (influenced by cleft) of clift, from Old English geclyft; see gleubh- in Indo-European roots.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (2)

  1. Early modern English also clift, from Middle English clift, clyft, and erroneously clif (perhaps from Anglo-Saxon *clyft, not found; otherwise Scandinavian), = Dutch kluft = Old High German chluft, German kluft = Icelandic kluft = Norwegian kluft, klyft = Swedish klyft, klyfta = Danish klöft, a cleft, crack, etc.; from the verb: Anglo-Saxon cleófan = Dutch kloven, etc., cleave, split: see cleave, and cf. clove = clough.
  2. Pp. of cleave, v.
 

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/klɛft/
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