CLEAVE • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Cleave

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verb

Cleave v. t. (past clove; past part. cloven or cleaved; pres. part. cleaving)

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

To part or open naturally; to divide. "Every beast that parteth the hoof, and cleaveth the cleft into two claws."

Cleave v. i. (past clove; past part. cloven or cleaved; pres. part. cleaving)

To adhere closely; to stick; to hold fast; to cling. "My bones cleave to my skin." "The diseases of Egypt... shall cleave unto thee." "Sophistry cleaves close to and protects Sin's rotten trunk, concealing its defects."

To unite or be united closely in interest or affection; to adhere with strong attachment. "Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife." "Cleave unto the Lord your God."

To fit; to be adapted; to assimilate. (Poetic.) "New honors come upon him, Like our strange garments, cleave not to their mold But with the aid of use."

Cleave v. i. (past clove; past part. cloven or cleaved; pres. part. cleaving) To part; to open; to crack; to separate; as parts of bodies; as, the ground cleaves by frost. "The Mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst."

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Etymology of 'Cleave'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Cleave" Quotes from Famous Books

... to us, from an honest endeavour to attain the truth concerning it. What have we to do with consequences? These are in the hands of God. Our duty is to seek out the truth in prayer and humility, and when we believe that we have found it, to cleave to it through evil and good report; TO FAIL IN THIS IS TO FAIL IN FAITH; to fail in faith is to be an infidel. Those who suppose that it is wiser to gloss over this or that, and who consider it "injudicious" to announce the whole truth in connection with Christianity, should ...

— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler

... condemned himself more severely than any of his judges would have dared; remembering that portion of his mental sensations which had savoured of fear, and forgetting the causes which had produced it. He judged himself a man stained with the foulest blot that could cleave to a soldier's name, a blot which nothing but death, not even death, could efface. But, inwardly condemned and outwardly degraded, his dread of recognition was intense; and feeling that he was in more danger of being discovered where the ...

— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald

... who points out the different localities as we pass along, and among the rest "Mokala a Mama", his "mamma's home". It was interesting to hear this tall gray-headed man recall the memories of boyhood. All the Makalaka children cleave to the mother in cases of separation, or removal from one part of the country to another. This love for mothers does not argue superior morality in other respects, or else Intemese has forgotten any injunctions his mamma may have given him not to tell lies. The respect, however, with which ...

— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... / broad, he also wore, That was so sharp at edges / that it ne'er forbore To cleave when swung on helmet: / blade it was full good. Stately was the huntsman / as there ...

— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler

... the waves, was such as accompanies impossible flights described in dreams, through some unknown medium. The surging waters seemed struggling to submerge us both; the two thin, tanned legs of the fisherman about whose neck I was clinging, appeared ridiculously inadequate to cleave a successful path through a sea of such ...

— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd

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