cloven

American  

[kloh-vuhn] / ˈkloʊ vən /

verb

1. a past participle of cleave

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adjective

1. cleft; split; divided.

   Goats have cloven hoofs.

cloven British  

/ ˈkləʊvən /

verb

1. a past participle of cleave 1

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adjective

1. split; cleft; divided

Other Word Forms

• uncloven adjective

Etymology

Origin of cloven

First recorded in 1150–1200, for the adjective

Explanation

Something that's cloven is divided in two. Goats, with their funny, two-toed feet, are often described as having cloven hooves. It's common to see the adjective cloven describing the hooves of animals like sheep, goats, and deer. Jewish religious law specifies that animals that have cloven hooves but don't chew their cud, like pigs, are unclean and shouldn't be eaten. Other things can be cloven, too, if they're divided from each other. If you break up with your girlfriend, you can say the two of you are now cloven. The Old English root, cleofan, means "to split or separate."

Example Sentences

Foot and mouth disease is a highly contagious virus that affects cloven hooved animals.

From Reuters • Jul. 20, 2022

“Luckenbooth” starts in 1910 and creeps across the 20th century on cloven feet.

From Washington Post • Dec. 21, 2021

Made with both graphite and acrylic, the busy scenes achieve an entrancing variety of tones: acres of newspaper gray, crinkling across the drawings’ shallow perspective, are periodically cloven by a sudden swath of velvety black.

From New York Times • Sep. 9, 2021

“Chilling Adventures” hurls everything it can into its narrative cauldron, including a cave like a Hellmouth and a prep school like a satanic Hogwarts, replete with cloven hooves and pentagrams.

From The New Yorker • Oct. 26, 2018

“And, for thou wast a spirit too deli-cate/To act her earthy and abhorr’d commands ... /she did confine thee. . . into a cloven pine—” he whispered, and Meg recognized Mrs Who’s words to him.

From "A Wrinkle in Time" by Madeleine L'Engle