fold

verb

1. (transitive)To bend (any thin material, such as paper) over so that it comes in contact with itself.
2. (transitive)To make the proper arrangement (in a thin material) by bending.

   “If you fold the sheets, they'll fit more easily in the drawer.”

3. (transitive)To draw or coil (one’s arms, a snake’s body, etc.) around something so as to enclose or embrace it.
4. (transitive)To stir (semisolid ingredients) gently, with an action as if folding over a solid.

   “Fold the egg whites into the batter.”

   “8 Jan 2020, Felicity Cloake in The Guardian, How to make the perfect gluten-free chocolate brownies – recipe if you want to make life really easy for yourself, may I point you in the direction of Sunflour’s recipe, which folds four eggs and 150g ground almonds into 500g chocolate spread.”

5. (intransitive)To become folded; to form folds.

   “Cardboard doesn't fold very easily.”

6. (informal, intransitive)To fall over; to collapse or give way; to be crushed.

   “The chair folded under his enormous weight.”

7. (intransitive)To give way on a point or in an argument.
8. (intransitive)To withdraw from betting.

   “With no hearts in the river and no chance to hit his straight, he folded.”

9. (broadly, intransitive)To withdraw or quit in general.
10. (intransitive)To fail, to collapse, to disband.
11. (intransitive)Of a company, to cease to trade.

    “The company folded after six quarters of negative growth.”

12. (transitive)To double or lay together (one’s arms, hands, wings, etc.) so as to overlap with each other.

    “He folded his arms in defiance.”

13. (obsolete, transitive)To plait or mat (hair) together.
14. (transitive)To enclose in a fold of material, to swathe, wrap up, cover, enwrap.
15. (transitive)To enclose within folded arms, to clasp, to embrace (see also enfold).

    “He put out his arms and folded her to his breast. And for a while she lay there sobbing. He looked at us over her bowed head, with eyes that blinked damply above his quivering nostrils. His mouth was set as steel.”

16. (figuratively, transitive)To cover up, to conceal.

    “I will not poyſon thee with my attaint, / Nor fold my fault in cleanly coin’d excuſes, / My ſable ground of ſinne I will not paint, / To hide the truth of this falſe nights abuſes.”

17. (obsolete, transitive)To ensnare, to capture.
18. (transitive)To split (a line of text) across multiple lines, to obey line length limitations.
19. (transitive)To confine (animals) in a fold, to pen in.

    “The star that bids the shepherd fold, Now the top of heaven doth hold.”

    “On the same day [Midsummer Eve] people in the Isle of Man were wont to light fires to the windward of every field, so that the smoke might pass over the corn; and they folded their cattle and carried blazing furze or gorse round them several times.”

20. (figuratively, transitive)To include in a spiritual ‘flock’ or group of the saved, etc.
21. (transitive)To place sheep on (a piece of land) in order to manure it.

noun

1. An act of folding.

   “give the bedsheets a fold before putting them in the cupboard.”

   “After two reraises in quick succession, John realised his best option was probably a fold.”

2. An act of folding.
3. That which is folded together, or which enfolds or envelops.

   “[…] There sat the Shadow fear’d of man; Who broke our fair companionship, ⁠And spread his mantle dark and cold; And wrapt thee formless in the fold, […]”

4. That which is folded together, or which enfolds or envelops.

   “[…] the Ancient Ægyptian Mummies, were ſhrowded in a Number of Folds of Linnen, beſmeared with Gummes, in manner of Seare-Cloth; […]”

5. That which is folded together, or which enfolds or envelops.

   “[…] the weake wanton Cupid Shall from your necke vnlooſe his amorous fould, […]”

6. That which is folded together, or which enfolds or envelops.
7. (obsolete)That which is folded together, or which enfolds or envelops.
8. That which is folded together, or which enfolds or envelops.
9. A gentle curve of the ground; gentle hill or valley.
10. The bending or curving of one or a stack of originally flat and planar surfaces, such as sedimentary strata, as a result of plastic (i.e. permanent) deformation.

    “The folds are most abrupt to the eastward; to the west, they diminish in boldness, and become gentle undulations”

11. The division between the top and bottom halves of a broadsheet: headlines above the fold will be readable in a newsstand display; usually the fold.

    “Newspaper editors know the importance of putting the most important information “above the fold,” that is, visible when the paper is folded and on the rack.”

12. (broadly)The division between the part of a web page visible in a web browser window without scrolling; usually the fold.

    “For example, a story that is "page I, above the fold" is considered very important news. In web page design, the fold signifies the place at which the user has to scroll down to get more information.”

13. Any of a family of higher-order functions that process a data structure recursively to build up a value.

    “It was Erik Meijer who coined the name hylomorphism to describe a computation that consists of a fold after an unfold. The unfold produces a data structure and the fold consumes it.”

14. A section of source code that can be collapsed out of view in an editor to aid readability.
15. One individual part of something described as manifold, twofold, fourfold, etc.
16. A pen or enclosure for sheep or other domestic animals.

    “Leaps o're the fence with ease into the fold.”

    ““I came down like a wolf on the fold, didn’t I ? Why didn’t I telephone ? Strategy, my dear boy, strategy. This is a surprise attack, and I’d no wish that the garrison, forewarned, should escape. …””

17. Any enclosed piece of land belonging to a farm or mill; yard, farmyard.
18. An enclosure or dwelling generally.
19. (collective)A group of sheep or goats, particularly those kept in a given enclosure.
20. (figuratively)Home, family.
21. A church congregation, a group of people who adhere to a common faith and habitually attend a given church; also, the Christian church as a whole, the flock of Christ.

    “And other sheepe I haue, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall heare my voyce; and there shall be one fold, and one shepheard.”

22. (figuratively)A group of people with shared ideas or goals or who live or work together.

    “Having suffered the loss of Rooney just as he had returned to the fold, Moyes' mood will not have improved as Liverpool took the lead in the third minute.”

    “Most recently, in his ambitious 2015 book, Leaving the Jewish Fold, Endelman significantly enlarges his purview in both time and space to broadly survey the phenomenon of Jewish conversion from early medieval to postmodern times […]”

    “In a first phase of foreign policy, after 1945, my country sought to regain former enemies’ trust. We are forever grateful that they extended their hand to us, readmitting us into the global fold.”

    ““I hope that eventually Elon comes back into the fold. Maybe that’s not possible now because he’s gone so nuclear,” the vice-president said.”

23. (dialectal, obsolete, poetic, uncountable)The Earth; earth; land, country.