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splice

UK/ˈsplaɪ̯s/US/ˈsplaɪ̯s/
verbC1Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #11,375 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: splicing, spliced, splices

To splice is to join two lengths of film or tape together. Splice the film, a clean splice, spliced together.

The join is made so that it carries load or plays through without a break, which is the point in every use — rope, film, cable and genes. Gene splicing borrowed the word directly. Splice the mainbrace is a naval order to serve a drink. Note that the word came from Dutch and is related to split.

Definitions of splice

  1. 1verbspliceTo join two lengths of film, tape or rope together.C1

    “The sailor spliced the two ends of the rope so neatly that you couldn't see the join.”

splice is a joining.

Where it comes from

Middle Dutch splissen is related to splitten, to split. The rope-working sense came into English with Dutch seamanship.

  1. Middle Dutch

    splissen

  2. English, today

    splice

Circa 1525, borrowed from Middle Dutch splissen (Modern Dutch splitsen); akin to Middle Dutch splitten (“to split”), German spleißen (“to split, splice”), Spliss (“split ends, hair breakage”), French épisser also from Dutch. The Dutch word originally referred only to the fraying of the ropes' ends but was then also used for the entire process of fraying and retying; hence the peculiar semantic development from “split” to “join”. The same development occurred in German.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in News & Communication

Practise this word

splice in the wild

  • There exist self-splicing introns, that is, ribozymes that can catalyze their own excision from their parent RNA molecule.

    RNA splicing

  • In written English usage, a comma splice or comma fault is the use of a comma to join two independent clauses.

    Comma splice

  • Most types of splices are used on three-strand rope, but some can be done on 12-strand or greater single-braided rope, as well as most double braids.

    Rope splicing

  • A splice joint is a method of joining two members end to end in woodworking.

    Splice joint

  • The splice joint is used when the material being joined is not available in the length required.

    Splice joint

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.