cleft /ˈklɛft/noun 3adjective 1verb 1forms 3 noun3 •An opening, fissure, or V-shaped indentation made by or as if by splitting.The river flows through a cleft in the mountains. •A disease of horses; a crack on the band of the pastern. •A piece made by splitting. adjective1 •split, divided, or partially divided into two. verb1 •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."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). — 2002 formsclefted · clefting · clefts
