Nominal Forms
Infinitive: to cleft
Participle: clefted
Gerund: clefting
Cognates
-
Indicative
Present
| I | cleft |
| you | cleft |
| he;she;it | clefts |
| we | cleft |
| you | cleft |
| they | cleft |
Perfect
| I | have clefted |
| you | have clefted |
| he;she;it | has clefted |
| we | have clefted |
| you | have clefted |
| they | have clefted |
Past
| I | clefted |
| you | clefted |
| he;she;it | clefted |
| we | clefted |
| you | clefted |
| they | clefted |
Pluperfect
| I | had clefted |
| you | had clefted |
| he;she;it | had clefted |
| we | had clefted |
| you | had clefted |
| they | had clefted |
Future
| I | will cleft |
| you | will cleft |
| he;she;it | will cleft |
| we | will cleft |
| you | will cleft |
| they | will cleft |
Future Perfect
| I | will have clefted |
| you | will have clefted |
| he;she;it | will have clefted |
| we | will have clefted |
| you | will have clefted |
| they | will have clefted |
Subjunctive
Present
| I | cleft |
| you | cleft |
| he;she;it | cleft |
| we | cleft |
| you | cleft |
| they | cleft |
Perfect
| I | have clefted |
| you | have clefted |
| he;she;it | have clefted |
| we | have clefted |
| you | have clefted |
| they | have clefted |
Imperfect
| I | clefted |
| you | clefted |
| he;she;it | clefted |
| we | clefted |
| you | clefted |
| they | clefted |
Pluperfect
| I | had clefted |
| you | had clefted |
| he;she;it | had clefted |
| we | had clefted |
| you | had clefted |
| they | had clefted |
Conditional
Present
| I | would cleft |
| you | would cleft |
| he;she;it | would cleft |
| we | would cleft |
| you | would cleft |
| they | would cleft |
Perfect
| I | would have clefted |
| you | would have clefted |
| he;she;it | would have clefted |
| we | would have clefted |
| you | would have clefted |
| they | would have clefted |
Imperative
| you | cleft |
| we | Let's cleft |
| you | cleft |
Verbs conjugated like 'cleft'
abandon,
abduct,
abear,
aberr,
abject,
abord,
abort,
abound,
abraid,
abray,
abrook,
abscind,
abscond,
absist,
absorb,
abstain,
abstract,
accend,
accent,
accept, etc. (List truncated at 20 verbs)
Verbs similar to 'cleft'
cleat,
alert,
bleat,
blet,
calefy,
cheat,
chef,
chest,
clart,
claut,
Synonyms & Antonyms
Additional Information
Phrasal Verbs
Etymology
From Middle English clift, from Old English ġeclyft, from Proto-West Germanic *klufti, from Proto-Germanic *kluftiz, equivalent to cleave + -t (“-th”). Compare Dutch klucht (“coarse comedy”), Swedish klyft (“cave, den”), German Kluft. See cleave.
Sample Sentences
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This may be so because in most languages the most natural clefting involves NP's, and it is in fact hard in most languages to cleft the verb, although some — notably Kwa languages in West-Africa — allow such clefting. [1983, John Haiman, Pamela Munro, editors, Switch-reference and Universal Grammar: Proceedings of a Symposium on Switch Reference and Universal Grammar, Winnipeg, May 1981:]
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When the affected object is clefted, the clefted constituent may be assigned a contrastive reading on the event denoted by the clause, as is shown in (62). [2002, Claire Lefebvre, A Grammar of Fongbe, page 521:]
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The strategy the language employs is to cleft the clause containing the wh-phrase, as exemplified in (3) […] [2013, Katharina Hartmann, Cleft Structures, page 270:]