From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:
Fork \Fork\, v. i. [imp. & p. p. Forked; p. pr. & vb. n.
Forking.]
1. To shoot into blades, as corn.
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The corn beginneth to fork. --Mortimer.
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2. To divide into two or more branches; as, a road, a tree,
or a stream forks.
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From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:
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.
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2. Anything furcate or like a fork in shape, or furcate at
the extremity; as, a tuning fork.
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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.
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Let it fall . . . though the fork invade
The region of my heart. --Shak.
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A thunderbolt with three forks. --Addison.
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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.
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5. The gibbet. [Obs.] --Bp. Butler.
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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.
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From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:
Fork \Fork\, v. t.
To raise, or pitch with a fork, as hay; to dig or turn over
with a fork, as the soil.
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Forking the sheaves on the high-laden cart. --Prof.
Wilson.
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To fork over To fork out, to hand or pay over, as money;
to cough up. [Slang] --G. Eliot.
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From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:
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.]
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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.
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Note: This is the more general word. See Brace,
Cantalever, Console, Corbel, Strut.
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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.
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3. (Naut.) A shot, crooked timber, resembling a knee, used as
a support.
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4. (Mil.) The cheek or side of an ordnance carriage.
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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.
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6. A gas fixture or lamp holder projecting from the face of a
wall, column, or the like.
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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.
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From WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006) [wn]:
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"
From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (8 July 2008) [foldoc]:
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)
From Jargon File (4.4.4, 14 Aug 2003) [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 Emacs/XEmacs fork, the GCC/EGCS fork (later healed by a merger)
and the forks among the FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD operating
systems.