Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Having a fork; bifurcate.
- adjective Shaped like or similar to a fork.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Having a fork or bifurcation; separating into diverging parts like the tines of a fork.
- Ambiguous; equivocal.
- Pointed, or prolonged to a point: as, forked shoes.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Formed into a forklike shape; having a fork; dividing into two or more prongs or branches; furcated; bifurcated; zigzag.
- adjective Having a double meaning; ambiguous; equivocal.
- adjective (Her.) a cross, the ends of whose arms are divided into two sharp points; -- called also
cross double fitché . Across forked of three points is a cross, each of whose arms terminates in three sharp points. - adjective [Obs.] advice pointing more than one way; ambiguous advice.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective That splits into two or more directions, or parts.
- verb Simple past tense and past participle of
fork .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective resembling a fork; divided or separated into two branches
- adjective having two meanings with intent to deceive
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
Support
Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word forked.
Examples
-
III. iii.276 (443,9) forked plague] In allusion to a _barbed_ or _forked_ arrow, which, once infixed, cannot be extracted.
Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies Samuel Johnson 1746
-
Having paid Carey over $15 million for Glitter, the label forked out an additional $28 million to void the remaining contract.
Fortune’s Fool Fred Goodman 2010
-
Having paid Carey over $15 million for Glitter, the label forked out an additional $28 million to void the remaining contract.
Fortune’s Fool Fred Goodman 2010
-
Having paid Carey over $15 million for Glitter, the label forked out an additional $28 million to void the remaining contract.
Fortune’s Fool Fred Goodman 2010
-
Having paid Carey over $15 million for Glitter, the label forked out an additional $28 million to void the remaining contract.
Fortune’s Fool Fred Goodman 2010
-
This is what I call a forked reading because you can see that the possible futures "- I tapped the Three of Swords and the Nine of Pentacles -" are wildly split.
The Empress File Sandford, John, 1944 Feb. 23- 1991
-
To start with, there are the animals that die after getting their necks caught in forked branches, as has been recorded for both giraffes and deer.
Archive 2006-05-01 Darren Naish 2006
-
The regulars triangulate their positions using landmarks invisible to the casual anglers: a certain forked tree, a faded white sign that once warned of dangerous currents, a particular stone on the Virginia side known as the Lowell Rock.
Fletcher's Boathouse 2002
-
The thunder pealed, and the lightning lit the sky in forked darts.
Mates at Billabong 1911
-
In the following year the antlers take the form shown in Fig. 4, and then follows the antler shown in Fig. 5, _a_, which generally has "forks" in place of points, and is known as forked antler in contradistinction to the point antler shown in Fig. 5, _b_, which retains the shape of the antler, Fig. 4, but has additional or intermediate prongs or branches.
Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 Various
dnfrd commented on the word forked
Past participle of the verb "fork," I imagine, meaning, "to be assaulted with a tined utensil." As in, "She forked you pretty good, man."
December 12, 2006
ramsler commented on the word forked
forked = to have plastic forks stuck in one's lawn as a practical joke.
July 1, 2009