Other forms: splitting, splits
To split is to break along a line into two parts. Split the log, the bag split, split it down the middle. It is irregular in the invisible way: split, split, split — no change at all.
It also means to divide something between people — split the bill, split the difference — and, of a group, to separate: the party split over the issue. The noun covers both the crack and the division: a split in the wood, a split in the party. Note split up, meaning to end a relationship, and splitting headache, which is a fixed and vivid phrase. And in gymnastics, the splits is the position, always plural.
1verbsplitTo break or divide along a line.
“The wood split cleanly down the grain.”
2verbdivideTo divide something between people.
“We split the bill four ways.”
3nouncrackA crack or a division.
“There is a split right along the seat.”
4verbgroupOf a group, to separate into parts that disagree.
“The committee split over the timing.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
split is a way of dividing.
Split came into English from Middle Dutch, a sailors' word for a ship breaking up on rocks. It is one of a group of vivid physical verbs English took from the Low Countries during the great age of North Sea trade.
Proto-West Germanic
*splittjan
Middle Low German
splitten — to split
Middle Dutch
splitten — to split
English, today
split
Attested since about 1567, from Middle Dutch splitten (“to split”) and/or Middle Low German splitten (“to split”), both ultimately from Proto-West Germanic splittjan, an intensive form of Proto-West Germanic splītan (“to split”), from Proto-Germanic splītaną (whence Danish splitte, Low German splieten, German spleißen), from Proto-Indo-European (s)pley- (“to split, splice”). Compare Middle English ysplett (“split”), Old English speld (“splinter”), Old High German spaltan (“to split”), mga slis (“splinter”), Lithuanian spaliai (“flax sheaves”), Czech půl (“half”), cu расплитати (“to cleave, split”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA