fork

Any of several types of pronged (tined) tools (physical tools), as follows:

Noun

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

    Coordinate Terms: spoon knife table knife butter knife steak knife spork foon chork

    1. A utensil with spikes used to put solid food into the mouth, or to hold food down while cutting, or for serving food.

    2. Any of several types of pronged tools for use on farms, in fields, or in the garden or lawn, such as a smaller hand fork for weeding or a larger one for turning over the soil.

    3. Any of several types of pronged tools for use on farms, in fields, or in the garden or lawn, such as a smaller hand fork for weeding or a larger one for turning over the soil.

      Such a pronged tool having a long straight handle, generally for two-handed use, as used for digging, lifting, mucking, pitching, etc.

    4. A tuning fork.

  2. A fork in the road, as follows:

    1. (physical) An intersection in a road or path where one road is split into two.

    2. (figurative) A decision point.

  3. A point where a waterway, such as a river or other stream, splits and flows into two (or more) different directions.

    Antonyms: confluence

  4. 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

    Synonyms: branch prong

  5. A point in time where one has to make a decision between two life paths.

    1. (metonymic) Either of the (figurative) paths thus taken.

  6. A departure from having a single source of truth (SSOT), sometimes intentionally but usually unintentionally.

    Antonyms: single source of truth, SSOT

    1. (metonymic) Any of the pieces/versions (of software, content, or data sets) thus created.

    2. (software) The launch of one or more separate software development efforts based upon a modified copy of an existing project, especially in free and open-source software.

    3. (software) The launch of one or more separate software development efforts based upon a modified copy of an existing project, especially in free and open-source software.

      (software) Any of the software projects resulting from the launch of such separate software development efforts based upon a copy of the original project.

      • LibreOffice is a fork of OpenOffice.

    4. (content management) The splitting of the coverage of a topic (within a corpus of content) into two or more pieces.

      • A content fork may be intentional (as from a schism about goals) or unintentional (merely from a lack of reorganizing, so far).

    5. (content management) The splitting of the coverage of a topic (within a corpus of content) into two or more pieces.

      (content management) Any of the pieces/versions of content thus created.

    6. (cryptocurrencies) A split in a blockchain resulting from protocol disagreements, or a branch of the blockchain resulting from such a split.

      • 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...
  7. The simultaneous attack of two adversary pieces with one single attacking piece (especially a knight).
  8. The crotch.
  9. A forklift.
    • Are you qualified to drive a fork?
  10. 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!
  11. 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.
  12. The upper front brow of a saddle bow, connected in the tree by the two saddle bars to the cantle on the other end.

    Synonyms: swell pommel

Origin

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...

Forms

forks

Related

denture trident a three-prong spear somewhat resembling a pitchfork

Derived

Ash Fork barley fork bent fork cake fork carving fork chip fork Clear Fork cocktail fork crab fork cut with a knife and fork dessert fork digging fork dinner fork dung fork dungfork farm-to-fork fingers were made before forks fish fork fondue fork forkable forkball fork beam forkbeard fork bomb

Noun business, mining

  1. The bottom of a sump into which the water of a mine drains.

Origin

Ultimately from Etymology 1, above, through use for various things with two or more branches. Attested in this sense from the 18th century.

Forms

forks forcque

Verb Entry 3

  1. To divide into two or more branches or copies.
    • A road, a tree, or a stream forks.

    1. (ambitransitive, computing) To spawn a new child process by duplicating the existing process.

      • A parent process forks a child process, which in turn can fork other processes. - 2008, Mark G. Sobell, A Practical Guide to Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Pearson Education, →ISBN:
      • 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. - 2013, W. Richard Stevens, Stephen A. Rago, Advanced Programming in the UNIX...

    2. (ambitransitive, software engineering) To launch a separate software development effort based upon a modified copy of an existing software project, especially in free and open-source software.

      • For various reasons, McCool's server project subsequently forked, leading to the development of the Apache Web Server. - 2007, Fadi P. Deek, James A. M. McHugh, Open Source: Technology and Policy, Cambridge University...
      • 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. - 2015, Christian...

    3. (transitive, software engineering) To create a copy of a distributed version control repository.

      • In this model, anyone can fork an existing repository and push changes to their personal fork. - 2015, Sajal Debnath, Mastering PowerCLI, Packt Publishing Ltd, →ISBN, page 27:
  2. To move with a fork (as hay or food).
    • forking the sheaves on the high-laden cart - 1844, John Wilson, Essay on the Genius, and Character of Burns:
    • Brianna curbed her pang of envy as she forked her plain, low-fat, crouton-free salad niçoise into her mouth and shook her head. - 2018, Maya Blake, chapter 2, in What the Greek's Money Can't Buy (Greek Bachelors),...
  3. To apply a fork to.
    • forking the soil
    • They delight in combing, or rather forking it, using for that purpose a large wooden fork with four diverging prongs, which answers the purpose of separating and arranging the long tangled, frizzly mass of cranial...
  4. To kick someone in the crotch.
  5. 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...
  6. To simultaneously attack two opposing pieces with a single attacking piece.
  7. Euphemistic form of fuck.
    • They were forking each other in the back room.

Forms

forks forking forked

Related

knife spoon

Derived

fork bomb dig one's grave with a fork dig one's grave with a fork and spoon fork off fork out fork over stick a fork in something

Verb business, mining

  1. 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.” - 1836 [1808], Richard Polwhele, A Cornish English Vocabulary:

Forms

forks forking forked forcque