cleaving

English

Pronunciation

• Audio (US):

  (file)

Verb

cleaving

1. present participle and gerund of cleave
   • 1832, Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Heath's Book of Beauty, 1833, The Enchantress, page 1:

     The silence of a summer night is now sleeping on its bosom, where the bright stars are mirrored, as if in its depths they had another home and another heaven. A spirit, cleaving air midway between the two, might have paused to ask which was sea, and which was sky.

Adjective

cleaving (not comparable)

1. That cleaves

Noun

cleaving (plural cleavings)

1. The act of one who cleaves, splits, or severs.
   • 2010, Greg Kucich, Keats, Shelley, and Romantic Spenserianism, page 273:

     Many of Spenser's readers today find the cleavings and reunifications of Redcrosse and Una presenting a psychodrama of mental fragmentation […]

2. The act of one who cleaves, clings, or adheres.
   • 1813, John Owen, The grace and duty of being spiritually minded:

     On all of them they renew their cleavings to God with love and delight.

Derived terms

• autocleaving
• cleavingly
• noncleaving