fork9 definitions found fork - Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 : Fork \Fork\, v. i. [imp. & p. p. Forked; p. pr. & vb. n. Forking.] 1. To shoot into blades, as corn. [1913 Webster] The corn beginneth to fork. --Mortimer. [1913 Webster] 2. To divide into two or more branches; as, a road, a tree, or a stream forks. [1913 Webster] Fork \Fork\ (f[^o]rk), n. [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. [1913 Webster] 2. Anything furcate or like a fork in shape, or furcate at the extremity; as, a tuning fork. [1913 Webster] 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. [1913 Webster] Let it fall . . . though the fork invade The region of my heart. --Shak. [1913 Webster] A thunderbolt with three forks. --Addison. [1913 Webster] 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. [1913 Webster] 5. The gibbet. [Obs.] --Bp. Butler. [1913 Webster] 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. [1913 Webster] Fork \Fork\, v. t. To raise, or pitch with a fork, as hay; to dig or turn over with a fork, as the soil. [1913 Webster] Forking the sheaves on the high-laden cart. --Prof. Wilson. [1913 Webster] To fork over To fork out, to hand or pay over, as money; to cough up. [Slang] --G. Eliot. [1913 Webster] Bracket \Brack"et\, n. [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.] [1913 Webster] 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. [1913 Webster] Note: This is the more general word. See Brace, Cantalever, Console, Corbel, Strut. [1913 Webster] 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. [1913 Webster] 3. (Naut.) A shot, crooked timber, resembling a knee, used as a support. [1913 Webster] 4. (Mil.) The cheek or side of an ordnance carriage. [1913 Webster] 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. [1913 Webster] 6. A gas fixture or lamp holder projecting from the face of a wall, column, or the like. [1913 Webster] 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. [1913 Webster] fork - WordNet (r) 2.1 (2005) : fork n 1: cutlery used for serving and eating food 2: the act of branching out or dividing into branches [syn: branching, ramification, fork, forking] 3: the region of the angle formed by the junction of two branches; "they took the south fork"; "he climbed into the crotch of a tree" [syn: fork, crotch] 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, fork] v 1: lift with a pitchfork; "pitchfork hay" [syn: pitchfork, fork] 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, fork, furcate, separate] 4: shape like a fork; "She forked her fingers" fork - Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (26 May 2007) : fork <operating system> 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) fork - Jargon File (4.4.4, 14 Aug 2003) : 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 Emacs/XEmacs fork, the GCC/EGCS fork (later healed by a merger) and the forks among the FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD operating systems. fork - U.S. Gazetteer (1990) : Fork, MD Zip code(s): 21051 Fork, SC Zip code(s): 29543 fork - Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 : 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 |