cleft
Plural: clefts
Noun
- a split or indentation in something (as the palate or chin)
- a long narrow opening
- An opening, fissure, or V-shaped indentation made by or as if by splitting.
- A piece made by splitting.
- A disease of horses; a crack on the band of the pastern.
Verb
Verb Forms: clefted, clefting, clefts
- To insert a scion into a plant's stock for grafting.
- separate or cut with a tool, such as a sharp instrument
- make by cutting into
- come or be in close contact with; stick or hold together and resist separation
- 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."
- simple past and past participle of cleave
Adjective Satellite
- having one or more incisions reaching nearly to the midrib
Adj
- split, divided, or partially divided into two.
Examples
- a cleft of wood
- He CLEFT the word ’PLANT’ onto an existing stem of letters, forming a new word.
- The river flows through a cleft in the mountains.
Origin / 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.
Synonyms
adhere, cleave, cling, cohere, crack, crevice, dissected, fissure, rive, scissure, split, stick, cloven
Scrabble Score: 10
cleft: valid Scrabble (US) TWL Wordcleft: valid Scrabble Word in Merriam-Webster MW Dictionary
cleft: valid Scrabble Word in International Collins CSW Dictionary