cleft
English
Pronunciation
Etymology 1
Category:English terms derived from Proto-Indo-European#CLEFTCategory:English terms derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *glewbʰ-#CLEFTFrom Middle EnglishCategory:English terms inherited from Middle English#CLEFTCategory:English terms derived from Middle English#CLEFT clift, from Old EnglishCategory:English terms inherited from Old English#CLEFTCategory:English terms derived from Old English#CLEFT ġeclyft, from Proto-West GermanicCategory:English terms inherited from Proto-West Germanic#CLEFTCategory:English terms derived from Proto-West Germanic#CLEFT *klufti, from Proto-GermanicCategory:English terms inherited from Proto-Germanic#CLEFTCategory:English terms derived from Proto-Germanic#CLEFT *kluftiz, equivalent to cleave + -t (“-th”)Category:English terms suffixed with -t (th)#CLEFT. Compare Dutch klucht (“coarse comedy”), Swedish klyft (“cave, den”), German Kluft. See cleave.
Noun
cleft (plural clefts)Category:English lemmas#CLEFTCategory:English nouns#CLEFTCategory:English countable nouns#CLEFTCategory:English entries with incorrect language header#CLEFTCategory:Pages with entries#CLEFTCategory:Pages with 2 entries#CLEFT
- An opening, fissure, or V-shaped indentation made by or as if by splitting.
- The river flows through a cleft in the mountains.Category:English terms with usage examples#CLEFT
- 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.Category:English terms with quotations#CLEFT
- A piece made by splitting.
- a cleft of woodCategory:English terms with usage examples#CLEFT
- A disease of horses; a crack on the band of the pastern.
Derived terms
Related terms
Translations
See also
Verb
cleft (third-person singular simple present clefts, present participle clefting, simple past and past participle clefted)Category:English lemmas#CLEFTCategory:English verbs#CLEFTCategory:English entries with incorrect language header#CLEFTCategory:Pages with entries#CLEFTCategory:Pages with 2 entries#CLEFT
- (linguisticsCategory:en:Linguistics#CLEFT) 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."
- 1983, John Haiman, Pamela Munro, editors, Switch-reference and Universal Grammar: Proceedings of a Symposium on Switch Reference and Universal Grammar, Winnipeg, May 1981:
- This may be so because in most languages the most natural clefting involves NP's, and it is in fact hard in most languages to cleft the verb, although some — notably Kwa languages in West-Africa — allow such clefting.Category:English terms with quotations#CLEFT
- 2002, Claire Lefebvre, A Grammar of Fongbe, page 521:
- When the affected object is clefted, the clefted constituent may be assigned a contrastive reading on the event denoted by the clause, as is shown in (62).Category:English terms with quotations#CLEFT
- 2013, Katharina Hartmann, Cleft Structures, page 270:
- The strategy the language employs is to cleft the clause containing the wh-phrase, as exemplified in (3) […]Category:English terms with quotations#CLEFT
Related terms
Etymology 2
Verb
cleftCategory:English non-lemma forms#CLEFTCategory:English verb forms#CLEFTCategory:English entries with incorrect language header#CLEFTCategory:Pages with entries#CLEFTCategory:Pages with 2 entries#CLEFT
Adjective
cleft (not comparable)Category:English lemmas#CLEFTCategory:English adjectives#CLEFTCategory:English uncomparable adjectives#CLEFTCategory:English entries with incorrect language header#CLEFTCategory:Pages with entries#CLEFTCategory:Pages with 2 entries#CLEFT
Derived terms
Translations
Romanian
Etymology
Borrowed from GreekCategory:Romanian terms borrowed from Greek#CLEFTCategory:Romanian terms derived from Greek#CLEFT κλέφτης (kléftis).
Noun
cleft m (plural clefți)Category:Romanian lemmas#CLEFTCategory:Romanian nouns#CLEFTCategory:Romanian nouns with red links in their headword lines#CLEFTCategory:Romanian countable nouns#CLEFTCategory:Romanian entries with incorrect language header#CLEFTCategory:Romanian masculine nouns#CLEFTCategory:Pages with entries#CLEFTCategory:Pages with 2 entries#CLEFT