Search the Dictionary

Incised nearly to the midrob; as, a cleft leaf.

Having a cloven foot.

To ingraft by cleaving the stock and inserting a scion. Mortimer.

Divided about half way from the border to the base into two segments; bifid.

An opening; an open space; a gap, cleft, or chasm; a passage perforated; a hole; as, an aperture in a wall. An aperture between the mountains. Gilpin. The back aperture of the nostrils. Owen.

Cleft to the middle or slightly beyond the middle; opening with a cleft; divided by a linear sinus, with straight margins.

side of the throat of fishes and amphibians. See Illustration in Appendix. -- Branchial clefts, the openings between the branchial arches through which water passes.

16th and 17th centuries. See 4th Bill. Many time, but for a sallet, my brainpan had been cleft with a brown bill. Shak.

A cleft, crack, or chink, as in the surface of the earth, or in the skin.

Full of chaps; cleft; gaping; open.

A deep opening made by disruption, as a breach in the earth or a rock; a yawning abyss; a cleft; a fissure. That deep, romantic chasm which slanted down the green hill. Coleridge.

cow; to ruminate; hence, to meditate. Every beast the parteth the hoof, and cleaveth the cleft into two claws, and cheweth the cud among the beasts, that ye shall eat. Deut. xxiv. 6.

A chink or cleft; a narrow and deep ravine; as, Shanklin Chine in the Isle of Wight, a quarter of a mile long and 230 feet deep. [Prov. Eng.] "The cottage in a chine." J. Ingelow.

A small cleft, rent, or fissure, of greater length than breadth; a gap or crack; as, the chinks of wall. Through one cloudless chink, in a black, stormy sky. Shines out the dewy morning star. Macaulay.

Full of chinks or fissures; gaping; opening in narrow clefts. Dryden.

A crack or cleft. See Chap.

base of petals of the pink. Gray. Claw hammer, a hammer with one end of the metallic head cleft for use in extracting nails, etc. -- Claw hammer coat, a dress coat of the swallowtail pattern. [Slang] -- Claw sickness, foot rot, a disease affecting sheep.

To part or divide by force; to split or rive; to cut. O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain. Shak.

A cleft of crack; a narrow opening. [Obs.]

One of the divisions of a cleft hoof, as in the ox; also, the whole hoof.