fork

Meanings

Noun

• A pronged tool having a long straight handle, used for digging, lifting, throwing etc.
• A pronged tool for use in the garden; a smaller hand fork for weeding etc., or larger for turning over the soil.
• A gallows.
• A utensil with spikes used to put solid food into the mouth, or to hold food down while cutting.
• A tuning fork.
• An intersection in a road or path where one road is split into two.
• 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 point where a waterway, such as a river, splits and goes two (or more) different directions.
• A point in time where one has to make a decision between two life paths.
• The simultaneous attack of two adversary pieces with one single attacking piece (especially a knight).
• A splitting-up of an existing process into itself and a child process executing parts of the same program.
• The splitting of a software development effort into two or more separate projects, especially in free and open-source software.
• Any of the software projects resulting from such a split.
• A split in a blockchain resulting from protocol disagreements, or a branch of the blockchain resulting from such a split.
• The crotch.
• A forklift.
• The set of blades of a forklift, on which the goods to be raised are loaded.
• 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 upper front brow of a saddle bow, connected in the tree by the two saddle bars to the cantle on the other end.
• The bottom of a sump into which the water of a mine drains.

Verb

• To divide into two or more branches.
• To move with a fork (as hay or food).
• To spawn a new child process in some sense duplicating the existing process.
• To split a (software) project into several projects.
• To split a (software) distributed version control repository
• To kick someone in the crotch.
• To shoot into blades, as corn does.
• To bale a shaft dry.

Related

Narrower meaning words

• chip fork
• cocktail fork
• crab fork
• pickle fork

Origin

• From Middle English forke, from Old English force, forca, from Proto-West Germanic *furkō, from Latin furca, 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. Cognate also with North Frisian forck, Dutch vork, Danish fork, German Forke. Displaced native gafol, ġeafel, ġeafle, from Old English.
• In its primary sense of , Latin furca appears to be derived from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰerk(ʷ)-, *ǵʰerg(ʷ)-, 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, from Proto-Indo-European *perg-. If so, this would relate the word to Old English forclas, Old Saxon ferkal, Old Norse forkr, Norwegian fork, Swedish fork.