cleft
1a space or opening made by cleavage; a split.
a division formed by cleaving.
a hollow area or indentation: a chin with a cleft.
Veterinary Pathology. a crack on the bend of the pastern of a horse.
Origin of cleft
1Other words for cleft
Words Nearby cleft
Other definitions for cleft (2 of 2)
a simple past tense and past participle of cleave2.
cloven; split; divided.
(of a leaf, corolla, lobe, or other expanded plant part) having divisions formed by incisions or narrow sinuses that extend more than halfway to the midrib or the base.
Origin of cleft
2Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
How to use cleft in a sentence
Treatable diagnoses, such as cleft lip, are distinct from diagnoses pertaining to severely disabled newborns.
I'm a Doctor Who Cares for Newborns. I’m Nervous After the End of Roe | Rachel Fleishman | July 8, 2022 | TimeHad the slope been mellower, Lewis could have hopped on one leg, but the route traveled through standing timber, around downed trees, across rocky clefts, and through small subalpine finger meadows.
Messages pass between one cell and onto the next by floating across the space between — a gap called the synaptic cleft.
Like the Korean Peninsula, Illinois is cleft into two parts: Chicagoland and “downstate.”
Romney and Santorum Face Off: 5 Things To Watch For In Illinois | Ben Jacobs | March 19, 2012 | THE DAILY BEASTHe pretended that it was five hundred years' journey from one to another, and that he cleft the moon in twain.
A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 1 (of 10) | Franois-Marie Arouet (AKA Voltaire)
So I even told her how he had gone over the edge into the cleft, but without saying that we feared for his life for so long.
A Prince of Cornwall | Charles W. WhistlerThrice—De Valmont's guard shivered as a rush—through shield, hauberk, gorget cleft the Vikings' blade.
God Wills It! | William Stearns DavisPoint a pitying finger to the yawning abyss of shame, ruin, and despair that even now perhaps is being cleft under his feet.
Eric, or Little by Little | Frederic W. FarrarBut a single effective shot into the centre of the column had cleft it as a rock divides a torrent.
Overland | John William De Forest
British Dictionary definitions for cleft
/ (klɛft) /
the past tense and a past participle of cleave 1
a fissure or crevice
an indentation or split in something, such as the chin, palate, etc
split; divided
(of leaves) having one or more incisions reaching nearly to the midrib
Origin of cleft
1Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
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