Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use cleave in a sentence

18 example sentences · verb, noun

Cleave means to split or sever something with, or as if with, a sharp instrument. Example: “The wings clove the foggy air.”

Examples of cleave by meaning

verbTo split or sever something with, or as if with, a sharp instrument.

  • The wings clove the foggy air.
  • Some clock clove with silver the stillness of the morning.1911 October 26, Max Beerbohm, Zuleika Dobson, or, An Oxford Love Story, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: John Lane Company, published...

verbTo make or accomplish by or as if by cutting.

  • The truck clove a path through the ice.

nounA cut (slash) or a cut location, either naturally or artificially.

  • The valley by which the Taw leaves the Moor forms one of the cleaves that add so greatly to the attractions of the place, and this bears the same name as the parish.1905, William Crossing, Gems in a Granite Setting; Beauties of the Lone Land of Dartmoor, Plymouth Western Morning News Company, page 48

More sentences with cleave

  • Carotenoid cleavage oxygenases (CCOs) are a class of enzymes that oxidatively cleave carotenoids into apocarotenoids.2006, E. K. Marasco, K. Vay, C. Schmidt-Dannert, “Identification of Carotenoid Cleavage Oxygenases from Nostoc sp. PCC7120 with Different…. From the entry cleavage
  • Cleaving the air with bloodstroke upon bloodstroke, Jarl made his bitter steel sing.2006, Hugh Cook, The Witchlord and the Weaponmaster, page 18. From the entry bloodstroke
  • Late metals, on the other hand, have been used to cleave the C-N bonds of allylamines.2002, Robert A. Sánchez-Delgado, Organometallic Modeling of the Hydrodesulfurization and Hydrodenitrogenation Reactions. From the entry allylamine
  • The points allow the crosscut saw to score and cleave the grain cleanly.2001, Percival Everett, Erasure, Faber & Faber Limited (2021), page 5. From the entry crosscut saw
  • The speed, the cleaving wind, the flailing beams of light from traffic tormented me.1999, Rhona Petrie, Dead Loss, Chivers, →ISBN, page 43. From the entry cleaving
  • Men such as they must cleave only to the vile, hating all that is noblest and best.”1913 June–December, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “Forging Bonds of Hate and ——?”, in The Return of Tarzan, New York, N.Y.: A[lbert] L[evi] Burt…. From the entry vile
  • It’s the knottier questions that elicit his cleaving judgments.2016 October 3, Tad Friend, “Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny”, in The New Yorker. From the entry knotty
  • Citrullination is the post-translational conversion of peptidylarginine to peptidylcitrulline wherein the terminal positively charged amino group of the arginine is cleaved.2015 August 29, Stefan Reichert et al., “Association of levels of antibodies against citrullinated cyclic peptides and citrullinated…. From the entry peptidylcitrulline
  • Given enough time, the logic goes, water can cleave solid rock and mountains can be reduced to plains.2013 November 27, John Grotzinger, “The world of Mars [print version: International Herald Tribune Magazine, 2013, p. 37]”, in The New…. From the entry gradualism
  • Her graceful turns and leaps became more and more frantic and less graceful, and the last cleaving strike sent her rolling.2010, Allen Williams, The Witches' Kitchen, Little Brown, →ISBN, pages 67-68. From the entry cleaving
  • There are “born-again birders,” no joking, and many birders cleave their lives neatly in two: “before the spark” and “after the spark.”2019, Ted Floyd, How to Know the Birds: The Art and Adventure of Birding, National Geographic Books, →ISBN, page 29. From the entry spark bird
  • Indeed, if you try cleaving an imperfect crystal, you may find that it cannot be cleaved as well as a perfect one.1982, Alan Holden, Phylis Morrison, “Cleaving and Gliding Crystals”, in Crystals and Crystal Growing, Cambridge, Mass.; London: MIT Press…. From the entry cleavage
  • The bud in its calyx in the vales where the big lips cleave away from the slopes of the Mount of Venus.1970, Germaine Greer, The Politics Of Female Sexuality. From the entry thrilly
  • Lady Jean was unwilling to cleave to her religion at first throwing the reverend’s proffered bible against the wall and dismissing his preaching as ‘trittle trattle’.2003 June 15, Skelton, Douglas, Deadlier Than The Male Scotland's Most Wicked Women. From the entry trittle trattle

Meaning of cleave

  1. verb To split or sever something with, or as if with, a sharp instrument.
  2. verb To break a single crystal (such as a gemstone or semiconductor wafer) along one of its more symmetrical crystallographic planes (often by impact), forming facets on the resulting pieces.
  3. verb To make or accomplish by or as if by cutting.

Full definition of cleave

Questions about cleave in a sentence

How do you use cleave in a sentence?
Cleave is used as a verb and noun. For example: “The wings clove the foggy air.”
What is a short sentence with cleave?
“The wings clove the foggy air.”
What does cleave mean?
Cleave means to split or sever something with, or as if with, a sharp instrument.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cleave (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this page: “How to use cleave in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/cleave. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.