fork

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun A utensil with two or more prongs, used for eating or serving food.
• noun An implement with two or more prongs used for raising, carrying, piercing, or digging.
• noun A bifurcation or separation into two or more branches or parts.
• noun The point at which such a bifurcation or separation occurs.
• noun One of the branches of such a bifurcation or separation: synonym: branch.
• noun Games An attack by one chess piece on two pieces at the same time.
• intransitive verb To raise, carry, pitch, or pierce with a fork.
• intransitive verb To give the shape of a fork to (one's fingers, for example).
• intransitive verb Games To launch an attack on (two chess pieces).
• intransitive verb Informal To pay. Used with over, out, or up:
• intransitive verb To divide into two or more branches.
• intransitive verb To use a fork, as in working.
• intransitive verb To turn at or travel along a fork.

from The Century Dictionary.

• In chess, to attack (two hostile pieces) with a pawn.
• To raise or pitch with a fork, as hay.
• To dig and break with a fork, as ground.
• In mining, to pump or otherwise clear out (water) from a shaft or mine.
• To become bifurcated or forked; send out diverging parts like the tines of a fork.
• In mining, to draw out water from a shaft.
• noun In mech.: A pair of teeth or pins standing out from a bar and inclosing a space within which runs the belt of a machine fitted with fast and loose pulleys. By moving the bar which carries the pins endwise the belt can be shifted.
• noun A piece of steel fitting into the socket or chuck on a lathe, used for driving the piece to be turned.
• noun A position, in a game of chess, where two pieces are attacked at the same time by a pawn.
• noun An instrument or tool consisting of a handle with a shank, usually of metal, terminating in two or more prongs or tines.
• noun One of various agricultural tools with the prongs of which loose substances are gathered and lifted, as a hay-fork or dung-fork. See pitchfork.
• noun Something resembling a fork in form
• noun One of the parts into which anything is divided by bifurcation; a forking branch or division; a prong or shoot: as, the forks of a road or stream; Clark's fork of Columbia river; a fork of lightning.
• noun The point or barb of an arrow.
• noun The bifurcated part of the human frame; the legs.
• noun A gibbet; in the plural, the gallows. See furca.
• noun In mining, the bottom of the sump.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• intransitive verb To shoot into blades, as corn.
• intransitive verb To divide into two or more branches.
• transitive verb To raise, or pitch with a fork, as hay; to dig or turn over with a fork, as the soil.
• transitive verb [Slang] to hand or pay over, as money; to cough up.
• noun An instrument consisting of a handle with a shank terminating in two or more prongs or tines, which are usually of metal, parallel and slightly curved; -- used for piercing, holding, taking up, or pitching anything.
• noun Anything furcate or like a fork in shape, or furcate at the extremity.
• noun One of the parts into which anything is furcated or divided; a prong; a branch of a stream, a road, etc.; a barbed point, as of an arrow.
• noun The place where a division or a union occurs; the angle or opening between two branches or limbs.
• noun obsolete The gibbet.
• noun (Shipbuilding) a half beam to support a deck, where hatchways occur.
• noun (Wood Turning) a lathe center having two prongs for driving the work.
• noun The forked end of a rod which forms part of a knuckle joint.
• noun (Mining) A mine is said to be in fork, or an engine to “have the water in fork,” when all the water is drawn out of the mine.
• noun the branches into which it divides, or which come together to form it; the place where separation or union takes place.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun A pronged tool having a long straight handle, used for digging, lifting, throwing etc.