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.

(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."

simple past tense and past participle of cleave

split, divided, or partially divided into two.

plural of cleft

Third-person singular simple present indicative form of cleft

(medicine) The formation of a cleft lip or cleft palate. / (linguistics) The formation of a cleft sentence.

present participle of cleft

plural of clefting

Having a cleft; cloven.