Both Uses of
cleave
in
The Devil and Tom Walker
- He raked it out of the vegetable mould, and lo! a cloven skull, with an Indian tomahawk buried deep in it, lay before him.†
*
- She must have died game, however; for it is said Tom noticed many prints of cloven feet deeply stamped about the tree, and found handfuls of hair, that looked as if they had been plucked from the coarse black shock of the woodsman.†
Definition:
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(cleave as in: cleave through) to split or cut through somethingeditor's notes: Ironically, this word can mean to split in two or to hold together.
Note that you may see cleaved, cleft, clove, or cloven as the past tense of this sense of cleave.