clift

See also: Clift

English

Etymology

Variant form of cliff, influenced by cleft.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /klɪft/
• Rhymes: -ɪft

Noun

clift (plural clifts)

1. (obsolete) A cliff. [14th–19th c.]
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto XI”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:

     So downe he fell, as an huge rockie clift, / Whose false foundation waues haue washt away [...].

   • 1624, John Smith, Generall Historie, Kupperman, published 1988, page 91:

     so broad is the bay here, we could scarce perceive the great high clifts on the other side: by them we Anchored that night and called them Riccards Cliftes.

Derived terms

• clifted
• clifty

 

Middle English

Alternative forms

• clyft, clifte, clyfte

Etymology

Inherited from Old English ġeclyft, from Proto-Germanic *kluftiz; equivalent to cleven +‎ -th.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /klift/

Noun

clift (plural cliftes)

1. A cleft; a fission, fissure, or split in something.
2. A slash wound; an injury from an instance of slicing, cleaving, rupturing or cutting.
3. The fork in one's legs or behind; a bodily cleft.
4. (rare) A cliff or bank.
5. (rare) A slicing for surgical reasons.
6. (rare) A shard or piece of something.

Descendants

• English: cleft
• Scots: clift

References

• “clift, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 2018-07-31.