Cleavage

Quick meaning: Cleavage is a noun meaning The act of cleaving or the state of being cleft.

Meaning

The act of cleaving or the state of being cleft.

More Meanings

1. The hollow or separation between a woman's breasts, especially as revealed by a low neckline.
2. (by extension) Any similar separation between two body parts, such as the buttocks or toes.
3. (biology) The repeated division of a cell into daughter cells after mitosis.
4. (chemistry) The splitting of a large molecule into smaller ones.
5. (mineralogy) The tendency of a crystal to split along specific planes; schistosity.
6. (politics) The division of voters into voting blocs.

Example Sentences

Holonym: décolletage

Low-cut Restoration costumes worn by the Misses Lockwood and Roc (see cut) display too much "cleavage" (Johnston Office trade term for the shadowed depression dividing an actress' bosom into two distinct sections).

[…] the forces — the internal cleavages over class differences, the desire for "the good life," the white racist flight from the die schwartze — which shattered Jewish working-class community in the generation before mine.

All this time I kept my gaze fixed on hers, an enormously difficult task given the gravitational pull exerted by her cleavage. While I was critical of many things when it came to so-called Western civilization, cleavage was not one of them.

Word Forms

• cleavages

Synonyms for cleavage

Depending on context, synonyms include segmentation.

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include segmentation, rift, scission, splitting, clipping, cut.

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