Word.ws English Dictionary

forcleave

forcleave verb: to cut to pieces, hack, chop up.

Verb

forcleave (third-person singular simple present forcleaves, present participle forcleaving, simple past forclove, past participle forcloven)

  1. (obsolete) to cut to pieces, hack, chop up.

Forms of forcleave

third-person singular presentforcleaves
present participleforcleaving
pastforclove
past participleforcloven

Origin of forcleave

From Middle English forcleven (“to cut to pieces”), from for- (perfective prefix) + cleven (“to cleave, cut”).

Questions about forcleave

What does forcleave mean?
Forcleave means to cut to pieces, hack, chop up.
What part of speech is forcleave?
Forcleave is a verb.
What is the past tense of forcleave?
The past tense of forcleave is forclove.

Words near forcleave in the dictionary

  1. forcipulatid
  2. forcipulatids
  3. forcipule
  4. forcipules
  5. forcite
  6. forcleave
  7. forclose
  8. forclosed
  9. forcloses
  10. forclosing
  11. forclosure

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: forcleave (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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