cleft

Etymology

The noun is inherited from Middle English clift (“crack, fissure”),^[2][3][4] also clyft,^[5][6] inherited from Old English geclyft (“split, cloven”).^[3][7][8][9] The OED posits an unrecorded Old English noun *clyft, from Proto-Germanic *kluftiz,^[5][3][7] which is built on the weak grade of the Germanic verb behind cleave.^[5][10] The spelling with -e- replaced clift in the 1570s under the influence of the participle.^{[3][7][10][11]} The adjective is the past participle of the same verb, Middle English cleven,^{[4][8][12][5]} a newly formed weak participle beside the older cloven,^[3][9][5] and the verb is Old English clēofan (“to split”).^[8][9] The root is Proto-Indo-European *gleubʰ- (“to cut, cleave”).^[3][4][13] Cognates of the noun include Old High German chluft, German Kluft, Old Norse kluft and Danish kløft (“cleft, chink”).^[5][3][7] Skeat took the noun from Scandinavian, comparing the Icelandic and Danish words;^[14] the other dictionaries treat it as native.^[5][7][2]

Earliest recorded meaning

As clift, the fork of the legs: about 1325, in a gloss to Walter de Bibbesworth;^[5][3] also a parting of the hair, before 1325, in the Cursor Mundi.^[5][7] The general sense of a split or fissure is first quoted in the OED from Chaucer's translation of Boethius, about 1374,^[5] but the MED has a crack or rift about 1330.^[2]

Semantic evolution

The noun started as any opening made by splitting and narrowed to particular splits: a slit in a tree for a graft, a crack in the skin, and a crack on a horse's foot.^[5][12][8] Johnson (1755) gives the plain sense "a space made by the separation of parts" and a separate farriers' sense of cracks on the pasterns.^[15] Chaucer used the older form seven times, as clift, for a crack or chink.^[6] The word also came to name the piece split off, especially split wood for fuel, which is now dialectal;^[5][12] the English Dialect Dictionary records this in Northamptonshire, Warwickshire, Sussex and Somerset.^[16] The adjective moved from "split apart" to "split only part of the way", the sense behind cleft palate and cleft stick,^[5][12][3] and in the 20th century linguists gave it a technical use in cleft sentence.^[5][12]

Timeline

• before 1325 – clift, a parting of the hair (obsolete by 1694).^[5][7]
• c. 1325 – the fork of the legs, now dialectal.^[5][3]
• c. 1374 – a split, fissure or crack, in Chaucer.^[5]
• 1393 – adjective, split apart, in Gower.^[5][3]
• before 1398 – a slit in a tree to receive a graft, in Trevisa.^[5]
• early 15th century – a piece formed by splitting, especially wood for fuel.^[5]
• 1574 – adjective, split to a certain depth, forked.^[5]
• 1576 – the spelling cleft for the noun; also a crack of the skin.^[7][5]
• 1609 – adjective, figuratively divided, twofold, in Shakespeare.^[5]
• 1610 – verb, to divide or split (obsolete by 1657).^[5]
• 1828 – cleft palate.^[3]
• 1847 – in surgery, the opening in a cleft palate.^[5]
• 1937 – cleft sentence, in Jespersen.^[5]

Meanings

Noun

1. A narrow opening made by or as if by splitting; a fissure or crevice: Ferns grew from a cleft in the cliff face.^[17][8][5]
2. A V-shaped indentation or hollow, as in the chin.^[17][8]
3. The gap in a palate affected by a congenital split.^[5][17]
4. A crack on the bend of a horse's pastern, or the hollow in its hoof.^[8][12]
5. (dialect) A piece of split wood, especially for fuel.^[5][12][16]

Adjective

1. Split or divided part of the way through: a cleft chin.^[17][8][5]
2. (botany) Of a leaf, divided by incisions reaching about halfway or nearly to the midrib.^[17][8]
3. in a cleft stick: in a position with no way forward or back; in a dilemma.^[8][12]

Verb

1. The past tense and a past participle of cleave, to split.^[17]

Word family

• uncleft
• cleft lip
• cleft palate
• cleft sentence
• synaptic cleft

Related words

• cleave
• cleavage
• cleaver
• cloven
• kloof

Usage notes

MW and the Oxford dictionaries enter the noun and the adjective separately, the noun with its earlier form clift and the adjective as a participle of cleave.^[8][12][5] Cleft and cloven are both past participles of that verb,^[5][12] and Collins still lists cleft as one of its past forms.^[17]

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z 27 28 29 30 31 32 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b Benson, Larry D., Glossarial Concordance to Middle English (Chaucer, Gower), Johns Hopkins University, github.com/jhu-digital-manuscripts/gcme
7. ^ a b c d e f g h Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
8. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
9. ^ a b c Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
10. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
11. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
12. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
13. ^ Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Germanisches Wörterbuch, 5th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
14. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
15. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
16. ^ a b Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
17. ^ a b c d e f g Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins