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From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.44 [gcide]:
Fork \Fork\, verb (used with an object) To raise, or pitch with a fork, as hay; to dig or turn over with a fork, as the soil.
Forking the sheaves on the high-laden cart. --Prof. Wilson.
{To fork over} {To fork out}, to hand or pay over, as money; to {cough up}. [Slang] --G. Eliot.
From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.44 [gcide]:
Fork \Fork\ (f[^o]rk), noun [AS. forc, fr. L. furca. Cf. {Fourch['e]}, {Furcate}.]
1. An instrument consisting of a handle with a shank terminating in two or more prongs or tines, which are usually of metal, parallel and slightly curved; -- used for piercing, holding, taking up, or pitching anything.
2. Anything furcate or like a fork in shape, or furcate at the extremity; as, a tuning fork.
3. 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.
Let it fall . . . though the fork invade The region of my heart. --Shak.
A thunderbolt with three forks. --Addison.
4. The place where a division or a union occurs; the angle or opening between two branches or limbs; as, the fork of a river, a tree, or a road.
5. The gibbet. [Obs.] --Bp. Butler.
{Fork beam} (Shipbuilding), a half beam to support a deck, where hatchways occur.
{Fork chuck} (Wood Turning), a lathe center having two prongs for driving the work.
{Fork head}. (a) The barbed head of an arrow. (b) The forked end of a rod which forms part of a knuckle joint.
{In fork}. (Mining) A mine is said to be in fork, or an engine to ''have the water in fork,'' when all the water is drawn out of the mine. --Ure.
{The forks of a river} or {The forks of a road}, the branches into which it divides, or which come together to form it; the place where separation or union takes place.
From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.44 [gcide]:
Fork \Fork\, verb (used without an object) [imp. & p. p. {Forked}; p. pr. & vb. n. {Forking}.]
1. To shoot into blades, as corn.
The corn beginneth to fork. --Mortimer.
2. To divide into two or more branches; as, a road, a tree, or a stream forks.
From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.44 [gcide]:
Bracket \Brack"et\, noun [Cf. OF. braguette codpiece, F. brayette, Sp. bragueta, also a projecting mold in architecture; dim. fr. L. bracae breeches; cf. also, OF. bracon beam, prop, support; of unknown origin. Cf. {Breeches}.]
1. (Arch.) An architectural member, plain or ornamental, projecting from a wall or pier, to support weight falling outside of the same; also, a decorative feature seeming to discharge such an office.
Note: This is the more general word. See {Brace}, {Cantalever}, {Console}, {Corbel}, {Strut}.
2. (Engin. & Mech.) A piece or combination of pieces, usually triangular in general shape, projecting from, or fastened to, a wall, or other surface, to support heavy bodies or to strengthen angles.
3. (Naut.) A shot, crooked timber, resembling a knee, used as a support.
4. (Mil.) The cheek or side of an ordnance carriage.
5. (Print.) One of two characters [], used to inclose a reference, explanation, or note, or a part to be excluded from a sentence, to indicate an interpolation, to rectify a mistake, or to supply an omission, and for certain other purposes; -- called also {crotchet}.
6. A gas fixture or lamp holder projecting from the face of a wall, column, or the like.
7. (Gunnery) A figure determined by firing a projectile beyond a target and another short of it, as a basis for ascertaining the proper elevation of the piece; -- only used in the phrase, to establish a bracket. After the bracket is established shots are fired with intermediate elevations until the exact range is obtained. In the United States navy it is called {fork}. [Webster 1913 Suppl.]
{Bracket light}, a gas fixture or a lamp attached to a wall, column, etc.
From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:
fork
noun
1: cutlery used for serving and eating food
2: the act of branching out or dividing into branches [syn: {branching}, {ramification}, {forking}]
3: a part of a forked or branching shape; "he broke off one of the branches"; "they took the south fork" [syn: {branch}, {leg}, {ramification}]
4: an agricultural tool used for lifting or digging; has a handle and metal prongs
5: the angle formed by the inner sides of the legs where they join the human trunk [syn: {crotch}]
verb
1: lift with a pitchfork; "pitchfork hay" [syn: {pitchfork}]
2: place under attack with one's own pieces, of two enemy pieces
3: divide into two or more branches so as to form a fork; "The road forks" [syn: {branch}, {ramify}, {furcate}, {separate}]
4: shape like a fork; "She forked her fingers"
From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:
162 Moby Thesaurus words for "fork": L, V, affluent, angle, angle off, apex, bail, bayou, bend, bifurcate, bifurcation, bight, billabong, bine, bisect, bough, bowl, branch, branch out, branchedness, branchiness, bucket, burgeon, by two, cant, cast, catapult, chevron, chuck, chunk, cleave, coin, confluent, confluent stream, corner, crank, crook, crotch, crotchet, crutch, cup, cut in two, cutlery, dart, dash, deadwood, decant, deflection, delta, dendritic drainage pattern, dichotomize, dimidiate, dining utensils, dip, dish, dish out, dish up, divaricate, divide, dogleg, effluent, elbow, ell, fan, feeder, fire, fission, flagellum, flat silver, flatware, fling, flip, forks, frond, furcate, furcation, furcula, furculum, groin, halve, heave, hollow ware, hook, hurl, hurtle, in half, inflection, inguen, jerk, knee, knives, ladle, lance, launch, let fly, limb, lob, nook, offshoot, pass, peg, pelt, pitch, pitchfork, point, pour, prong, put, put the shot, quoin, ramage, ramification, ramify, runner, sarment, scion, scoop, serve, shoot, shovel, shy, silver, silver plate, silverware, sling, slip, snap, spade, spear, split in two, spoon, spoons, spray, sprig, sprit, sprout, stainless-steel ware, stem, stolon, subdivide, sucker, swerve, switch, tablespoon, tableware, teaspoon, tendril, thallus, throw, tilt, toss, transect, tributary, trident, trifurcate, twig, veer, vertex, wishbone, zag, zig, zigzag
From Jargon File (4.3.1, 29 Jun 2001) [jargon]:
fork In the open-source community, a fork is what occurs when two (or more) versions of a software package's source code are being developed in parallel which once shared a common code base, and these multiple versions of the source code have irreconcilable differences between them. This should not be confused with a development branch, which may later be folded back into the original source code base. Nor should it be confused with what happens when a new distribution of Linux or some other distribution is created, because that largely assembles pieces than can and will be used in other distributions without conflict.
Forking is uncommon; in fact, it is so uncommon that individual instances loom large in hacker folklore. Notable in this class were the http://www.xemacs.org/About/XEmacsVsGNUemacs.html (Emacs/XEmacs fork), the GCC/EGCS fork (later healed by a merger) and the forks among the FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD operating systems.
From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03) [foldoc]:
fork A {Unix} {system call} used by a {process} (the "parent") to make a copy (the "child") of itself. The child process is identical to the parent except it has a different {process identifier} and a zero return value from the fork call. It is assumed to have used no resources. A fork followed by an {exec} can be used to start a different process but this can be inefficient and some later Unix variants provide {vfork} as an alternative mechanism for this. See also {fork bomb}. (1996-12-08)
From THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY ((C)1911 Released April 15 1993) [devils]:
FORK, noun An instrument used chiefly for the purpose of putting dead animals into the mouth. Formerly the knife was employed for this purpose, and by many worthy persons is still thought to have many advantages over the other tool, which, however, they do not altogether reject, but use to assist in charging the knife. The immunity of these persons from swift and awful death is one of the most striking proofs of God's mercy to those that hate Him.
From U.S. Gazetteer (1990) [gazetteer]:
Fork, MD Zip code(s): 21051 Fork, SC Zip code(s): 29543
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