All 6 Uses

cleave
in
The Hero With a Thousand Faces
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In the United States there is even a pathos of inverted emphasis: the goal is not to grow old, but to remain young; not to mature away from Mother, but to cleave to her.
p. 7.6 *

cleave = hold firmly
The girl had retreated to the image of her parent and there found protection—like the unsuccessful husband whose dream of mother love preserved him from the state of cleaving to a wife.
p. 52.2

cleaving = holding firmly
The eye of the ordained victor immediately perceives the chink in every fortress of circumstance, and his blow can cleave it wide.
p. 295.9 *

cleave = split or cut through
Tethys, the goddess of the sea, had dropped the bars, and the horses, with a jolt, abruptly started; cleaving with their feet the clouds; beating the air with their wings; outrunning all the winds that were rising from the same eastern quarter.†
p. 113.4
And in Australia, about a year following the ordeal of the circumcision, the candidate for full manhood undergoes a second ritual operation—that of subincision (a slitting open of the underside of the penis, to form a permanent cleft into the urethra).†
p. 133.1

cleft = a split or crack in something

"Editor's Notes"

Cleft is the past tense of cleave like left is past tense of leave.

Today, cleft is most seen in the form cleft palate or cleft lip to refer to medical conditions at birth.

Uses with a meaning too rare to warrant foucs:

And the mountains clove asunder;
On the shore the stones were shattered.†
p. 289.2 *

clove = a dried flower bud or section of a garlic plant

Definitions:

(1) (cleave as in: cleave through)
to split or cut through something

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.
(2) (cleave as in: cleave to)
to hold firmly to something -- such as an object, a person or idea

Ironically, this word can mean to split in two or to hold together.

Note that you may see cleaved, clove, or clave as the past tense of this sense of cleave.
(3) (meaning too rare to warrant focus)
a proper noun or other word too rare to warrant focus