From Middle English forke (“digging fork”), from Old English force, forca (“forked instrument used to torture”), from Proto-West Germanic *furkō (“fork”), from Latin furca (“pitchfork, forked stake; gallows, beam, stake, support post, yoke”), 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. Doublet of fourche and furcate. Cognate also with North Frisian forck (“fork”), Dutch vork (“fork”), Danish fork (“fork”), German Forke (“pitchfork”). Displaced native gafol, ġeafel, ġeafle (“fork”), from Old English. In its primary sense of “fork”, Latin furca appears to be derived from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰerk(ʷ)-, *ǵʰerg(ʷ)- (“fork”), 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 (“stake, stick, pole, post”), from Proto-Indo-European *perg- (“pole, post”). If so, this would relate the word to Old English forclas pl (“bolt”), Old Saxon ferkal (“lock, bolt, bar”), Old Norse forkr (“pole, staff, stick”), Norwegian fork (“stick, bat”), Swedish fork (“pole”).
A utensil with spikes used to put solid food into the mouth, or to hold food down while cutting, or for serving food.
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Any of several types of pronged tools for use on farms, in fields, or in the garden or lawn, such as a smaller hand fork for weeding or a larger one for turning over the soil.
› Any of several types of pronged (tined)… › Any of several types of pronged tools for…
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Such a pronged tool having a long straight handle, generally for two-handed use, as used for digging, lifting, mucking, pitching, etc.
› Any of several types of pronged (tined)…
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A tuning fork.
› A fork in the road, as follows:
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Physical, From the tool shape An intersection in a road or path where one road is split into two.
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Figuratively, From the tool shape A decision point.
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From the tool shape A point where a waterway, such as a river or other stream, splits and flows into two (or more) different directions.
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Metonymically 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.
Analogous to any prong of a pronged tool
a thunderbolt with three forks
this fork of the river dries up during droughts
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Figuratively A point in time where one has to make a decision between two life paths.
Figuratively, Metonymically, From a physical fork Any of the pieces/versions (of software, content, or data sets) thus created.
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Computing, Engineering, Mathematics, Natural sciences, Physical sciences, Sciences, SoftwareFiguratively, From a physical fork The launch of one or more separate software development efforts based upon a modified copy of an existing project, especially in free and open-source software.
› (software development, content management… › The launch of one or more separate software…
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Computing, Engineering, Mathematics, Natural sciences, Physical sciences, Sciences, SoftwareFiguratively, From a physical fork Any of the software projects resulting from the launch of such separate software development efforts based upon a copy of the original project.
LibreOffice is a fork of OpenOffice.
› (software development, content management…
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Figuratively, From a physical fork The splitting of the coverage of a topic (within a corpus of content) into two or more pieces.
By abstraction; content management; content management
A content fork may be intentional (as from a schism about goals) or unintentional (merely from a lack of reorganizing, so far).
› (software development, content management… › The splitting of the coverage of a topic…
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Figuratively, From a physical fork Any of the pieces/versions of content thus created.
By abstraction; content management; content management; content management
Known as a “fork”, the new version of bitcoin (dubbed Bitcoin XT) would support more transactions per hour, at the cost of increasing the amount of memory required to hold a full database of all the bitcoin transactions throughout history, known as the blockchain.2015 August 17, Alex Hern, “Bitcoin's forked: chief scientist launches alternative proposal for the currency”, in The Guardian:
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Board games, Chess, Games The simultaneous attack of two adversary pieces with one single attacking piece (especially a knight).
Either of the blades of a forklift (or, in plural, the set of blades), on which the goods to be raised are loaded.
Get those forks tilted back more or you're gonna lose that pallet!
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Cycling, Hobbies, Lifestyle, Motorcycling, Sports 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.
By abstraction from a pronged tool's shape
The fork can be equipped with a suspension on mountain bikes.
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The upper front brow of a saddle bow, connected in the tree by the two saddle bars to the cantle on the other end.
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Computing, Engineering, Mathematics, Natural sciences, Physical sciences, Sciences A set of data associated with an individual file in some file systems.
resource fork
HFS+ uses forks to store file data. Generally there are two types of forks available in HFS+, the data fork and the resource fork.2025, Fergus Toolan, File System Forensics, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, page 357:
denture, trident, a three-prong spear somewhat resembling a pitchfork
fork
verb
Etymology
From Middle English forke (“digging fork”), from Old English force, forca (“forked instrument used to torture”), from Proto-West Germanic *furkō (“fork”), from Latin furca (“pitchfork, forked stake; gallows, beam, stake, support post, yoke”), 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. Doublet of fourche and furcate. Cognate also with North Frisian forck (“fork”), Dutch vork (“fork”), Danish fork (“fork”), German Forke (“pitchfork”). Displaced native gafol, ġeafel, ġeafle (“fork”), from Old English. In its primary sense of “fork”, Latin furca appears to be derived from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰerk(ʷ)-, *ǵʰerg(ʷ)- (“fork”), 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 (“stake, stick, pole, post”), from Proto-Indo-European *perg- (“pole, post”). If so, this would relate the word to Old English forclas pl (“bolt”), Old Saxon ferkal (“lock, bolt, bar”), Old Norse forkr (“pole, staff, stick”), Norwegian fork (“stick, bat”), Swedish fork (“pole”).
Ambitransitive To divide into two or more branches or copies.
A road, a tree, or a stream forks.
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Computing, Engineering, Mathematics, Natural sciences, Physical sciences, SciencesAmbitransitive To spawn a new child process by duplicating the existing process.
A parent process forks a child process, which in turn can fork other processes.2008, Mark G. Sobell, A Practical Guide to Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Pearson Education, →ISBN:
It appears that the shell forks a copy of itself and that this copy then forks to make each of the previous processes in the pipeline.2013, W. Richard Stevens, Stephen A. Rago, Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment, 3rd edition, Addison-Wesley, →ISBN, page 304:
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Computing, Engineering, Mathematics, Natural sciences, Physical sciences, Sciences, SoftwareAmbitransitive To launch a separate software development effort based upon a modified copy of an existing software project, especially in free and open-source software.
For various reasons, McCool's server project subsequently forked, leading to the development of the Apache Web Server.2007, Fadi P. Deek, James A. M. McHugh, Open Source: Technology and Policy, Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 21:
Google forked WebKit to create the Blink project in April 2013 because they wanted to make larger-scale changes to WebKit to fit their own needs that did not align well with the WebKit project itself.2015, Christian Bird et al., editors, The Art and Science of Analyzing Software Data, Elsevier, →ISBN, page 77:
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Computing, Engineering, Mathematics, Natural sciences, Physical sciences, Sciences, SoftwareAmbitransitive To create a copy of a distributed version control repository.
In this model, anyone can fork an existing repository and push changes to their personal fork.2015, Sajal Debnath, Mastering PowerCLI, Packt Publishing Ltd, →ISBN, page 27:
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To move with a fork (as hay or food).
forking the sheaves on the high-laden cart1844, John Wilson, Essay on the Genius, and Character of Burns:
Brianna curbed her pang of envy as she forked her plain, low-fat, crouton-free salad niçoise into her mouth and shook her head.2018, Maya Blake, chapter 2, in What the Greek's Money Can't Buy (Greek Bachelors), HarperCollins UK, →ISBN:
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To apply a fork to.
forking the soil
They delight in combing, or rather forking it, using for that purpose a large wooden fork with four diverging prongs, which answers the purpose of separating and arranging the long tangled, frizzly mass of cranial vegetation much better than any comb could do.1869, Alfred Russel Wallace, The Malay Archipelago, volume II, London: Macmillan and Co., page 254:
I have known them couched up a Yard thick cover’d with an Hair-cloth and ſtirred only once a day, the Maltſer being always careful to throw the frozen outſides into the middle till the Corn begin to fork and warm in the Couch; after which time if it be not laid too thin, it will not eaſily freeze.1707, J[ohn] Mortimer, The Whole Art of Husbandry; or, The Way of Managing and Improving of Land. […], London: […] J[ohn] H[umphreys] for H[enry] Mortlock […], and J[onathan] Robinson […], →OCLC:
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Board games, Chess, Games To simultaneously attack two opposing pieces with a single attacking piece.
Forking the water, is drawing it all out; and when it is done, they say, “the mine or the water is forked;” and “the engine is in fork.”1836 [1808], Richard Polwhele, A Cornish English Vocabulary: