• IPA: /klɛft/

From Middle English clift, from Old English ġeclyft, from Proto-West Germanic *klufti, from Proto-Germanic *kluftiz, equivalent to .

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, section 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.

• French: fissure
• German: Spalte, Riß
• Italian: fessura
• Portuguese: rachadura, fissura, partido
• Russian: расще́лина
• Spanish: hendidura

cleft (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."

• clefting
• cleft sentence

1. Simple past tense and past participle of cleave

cleft (not comparable)

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

   Synonyms: cloven