FreeScrabbleDictionary

fork

Valid in Scrabble

Scrabble points
11
Words With Friends
11
Letters
4
Pronunciation
/fɔːk/
See all 4 pronunciations
/fɔːk/ · /fɔɹk/ · [fo̞ɹk] · /fo(ː)ɹk/

Definition of fork

35 senses · 2 parts of speech · etymology included

noun

  1. Any of several types of pronged (tined) tools (physical tools), as follows:
See all 35 definitions

noun

  1. Any of several types of pronged (tined) tools (physical tools), as follows:
  2. Any of several types of pronged (tined) tools (physical tools), as follows:
  3. Any of several types of pronged (tined) tools (physical tools), as follows:
  4. Any of several types of pronged (tined) tools (physical tools), as follows:
  5. (physical)A fork in the road, as follows:
  6. (figuratively)A fork in the road, as follows:
  7. A point where a waterway, such as a river or other stream, splits and flows into two (or more) different directions.
  8. (metonymically)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.
    “a thunderbolt with three forks”
    “this fork of the river dries up during droughts”
  9. (figuratively)A point in time where one has to make a decision between two life paths.
  10. (figuratively, metonymically)A point in time where one has to make a decision between two life paths.
  11. (figuratively, metonymically)(software development, content management, data management) A departure from having a single source of truth (SSOT), sometimes intentionally but usually unintentionally.
  12. (figuratively)(software development, content management, data management) A departure from having a single source of truth (SSOT), sometimes intentionally but usually unintentionally.
  13. (figuratively)(software development, content management, data management) A departure from having a single source of truth (SSOT), sometimes intentionally but usually unintentionally.
    “LibreOffice is a fork of OpenOffice.”
  14. (figuratively)(software development, content management, data management) A departure from having a single source of truth (SSOT), sometimes intentionally but usually unintentionally.
    “A content fork may be intentional (as from a schism about goals) or unintentional (merely from a lack of reorganizing, so far).”
  15. (figuratively)(software development, content management, data management) A departure from having a single source of truth (SSOT), sometimes intentionally but usually unintentionally.
  16. (figuratively)(software development, content management, data management) A departure from having a single source of truth (SSOT), sometimes intentionally but usually unintentionally.
    “Known as a “fork”, the new version of bitcoin (dubbed Bitcoin XT) would support more transactions per hour, at the cost of increasing the amount of memory required to hold a full database of all the bitcoin transactions throughout history, known as the blockchain.”
  17. The simultaneous attack of two adversary pieces with one single attacking piece (especially a knight).
  18. (British, vulgar)The crotch.
  19. (colloquial)A forklift.
    “Are you qualified to drive a fork?”
  20. Either of the blades of a forklift (or, in plural, the set of blades), on which the goods to be raised are loaded.
    “Get those forks tilted back more or you're gonna lose that pallet!”
  21. In a bicycle or motorcycle, the portion of the frameset holding the front wheel, allowing the rider to steer and balance, also called front fork.
    “The fork can be equipped with a suspension on mountain bikes.”
  22. The upper front brow of a saddle bow, connected in the tree by the two saddle bars to the cantle on the other end.
  23. A set of data associated with an individual file in some file systems.
    “resource fork”
    “HFS+ uses forks to store file data. Generally there are two types of forks available in HFS+, the data fork and the resource fork.”
  24. (obsolete)A gallows.
    “They had run through all punishments, and just 'scaped the fork”
  25. The bottom of a sump into which the water of a mine drains.

verb

  1. (ambitransitive)To divide into two or more branches or copies.
    “A road, a tree, or a stream forks.”
  2. (ambitransitive)To divide into two or more branches or copies.
    “A parent process forks a child process, which in turn can fork other processes.”
    “It appears that the shell forks a copy of itself and that this copy then forks to make each of the previous processes in the pipeline.”
  3. (ambitransitive)To divide into two or more branches or copies.
    “For various reasons, McCool's server project subsequently forked, leading to the development of the Apache Web Server.”
    “Google forked WebKit to create the Blink project in April 2013 because they wanted to make larger-scale changes to WebKit to fit their own needs that did not align well with the WebKit project itself.”
  4. (ambitransitive, transitive)To divide into two or more branches or copies.
    “In this model, anyone can fork an existing repository and push changes to their personal fork.”
  5. (transitive)To move with a fork (as hay or food).
    “forking the sheaves on the high-laden cart”
    “Brianna curbed her pang of envy as she forked her plain, low-fat, crouton-free salad niçoise into her mouth and shook her head.”
  6. (British, transitive)To kick someone in the crotch.
  7. (intransitive)To shoot into blades, as corn does.
    “I have known them couched up a Yard thick cover’d with an Hair-cloth and ſtirred only once a day, the Maltſer being always careful to throw the frozen outſides into the middle till the Corn begin to fork and warm in the Couch; after which time if it be not laid too thin, it will not eaſily freeze.”
  8. To simultaneously attack two opposing pieces with a single attacking piece.
  9. (euphemistic, form-of, transitive)Euphemistic form of fuck.
    “They were forking each other in the back room.”
  10. (transitive)To bale a shaft dry.
    “Forking the water, is drawing it all out; and when it is done, they say, “the mine or the water is forked;” and “the engine is in fork.””

Definitions from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA.

Etymology

From Middle English forke (“digging fork”), from Old English force, forca (“forked instrument used to torture”), from Proto-West Germanic *furkō (“fork”), from Latin furca (“pitchfork, forked stake; gallows, beam, stake,…

See full etymology

From Middle English forke (“digging fork”), from Old English force, forca (“forked instrument used to torture”), from Proto-West Germanic *furkō (“fork”), from Latin furca (“pitchfork, forked stake; gallows, beam, stake, support post, yoke”), of uncertain origin. The Middle English word was later reinforced by Anglo-Norman, Old Northern French forque (= Old French forche whence French fourche), also from the Latin. Doublet of fourche and furcate. Cognate also with North Frisian forck (“fork”), Dutch vork (“fork”), Danish fork (“fork”), German Forke (“pitchfork”). Displaced native gafol, ġeafel, ġeafle (“fork”), from Old English. In its primary sense of “fork”, Latin furca appears to be derived from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰerk(ʷ)-, *ǵʰerg(ʷ)- (“fork”), although the development of the -c- is difficult to explain. In other senses this derivation is unlikely. For these, perhaps it is connected to Proto-Germanic *furkaz, *firkalaz (“stake, stick, pole, post”), from Proto-Indo-European *perg- (“pole, post”). If so, this would relate the word to Old English forclas pl (“bolt”), Old Saxon ferkal (“lock, bolt, bar”), Old Norse forkr (“pole, staff, stick”), Norwegian fork (“stick, bat”), Swedish fork (“pole”).

Anagrams of fork

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Words you can make from fork

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