forking

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fork

(fôrk)

1. A utensil with two or more prongs, used for eating or serving food.

2. An implement with two or more prongs used for raising, carrying, piercing, or digging.

a. A bifurcation or separation into two or more branches or parts.

b. The point at which such a bifurcation or separation occurs: a fork in a road.

c. One of the branches of such a bifurcation or separation: the right fork. See Synonyms at branch.

4. Games An attack by one chess piece on two pieces at the same time.

v. forked, fork·ing, forks

v.tr.

1. To raise, carry, pitch, or pierce with a fork.

2. To give the shape of a fork to (one's fingers, for example).

3. Games To launch an attack on (two chess pieces).

4. Informal To pay. Used with over, out, or up: forked over $80 for front-row seats; forked up the money owed.

v.intr.

1. To divide into two or more branches: The river forks here.

a. To use a fork, as in working.

b. To turn at or travel along a fork.

[Middle English forke, digging fork, from Old English forca and from Old North French forque, both from Latin furca.]

fork′er n.

fork′ful′ n.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

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Noun	1.	forking - the place where something divides into branches furcation angular shape, angularity - a shape having one or more sharp angles bifurcation - the place where something divides into two branches ramification, branch, leg - a part of a forked or branching shape; "he broke off one of the branches"
	2.	forking - the act of branching out or dividing into branches branching, ramification, fork division - the act or process of dividing bifurcation - the act of splitting into two branches trifurcation - the act of splitting into three branches divarication - branching at a wide angle fibrillation - act or process of forming fibrils

Translations

Scheideweg

enfourchure

References in classic literature ?

To-morrow, in the natural sun, the skies will be bright; those who glared like devils in the forking flames, the morn will show in far other, at least gentler, relief; the glorious, golden, glad sun, the only true lamp --all others but liars!

View in context

Hence as Tess stirred the clods and sang her foolish little songs with scarce now a hope that Clare would ever hear them, she did not for a long time notice the person who worked nearest to her--a man in a long smockfrock who, she found, was forking the same plot as herself, and whom she supposed her father had sent there to advance the work.