Other forms: cleaved, cleaves, cleaving
To cleave is to split apart, or to cling faithfully to. Cleave the log, cleave to tradition, cleave in two.
It is the standard example of a word that is its own opposite, and the two senses were separate verbs in Old English that fell together by accident. The marriage service uses the clinging sense.
1verbcleaveTo split apart, or to cling faithfully to.
“With one blow of the axe, he cleaved the log in two.”
cleave is a splitting.
Two Old English verbs fell together: cleofan, to split, and clifian, to stick fast.
Proto-Indo-European
*glewbʰ- — to cut, to slice
Proto-Germanic
*kleubaną
Proto-West Germanic
*kleuban
Middle English
cleven
English, today
cleave
Built from
From Middle English cleven, from the Old English - strong verb clēofan (“to split, to separate”), from Proto-West Germanic kleuban, from Proto-Germanic kleubaną, from Proto-Indo-European glewbʰ- (“to cut, to slice”). a doublet of clive. Cognate with Dutch klieven, dialectal German klieben, Swedish klyva, Norwegian Nynorsk kløyva; also Ancient Greek γλύφω (“carve”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA