fork

plural forks

1. Any of several types of pronged (tined) tools (physical tools), as follows:
   1. A utensil with spikes used to put solid food into the mouth, or to hold food down while cutting, or for serving food.
   2. 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.
   3. Such a pronged tool having a long straight handle, generally for two-handed use, as used for digging, lifting, mucking, pitching, etc.
   4. A tuning fork.
2. A fork in the road, as follows:
   1. physicalby abstractionAn intersection in a road or path where one road is split into two.
   2. figurativelyby abstractionA decision point.
3. by abstractionA point where a waterway, such as a river or other stream, splits and flows into two (or more) different directions.

   Antonyms: confluence

4. metonymicallyanalogous to any prong of a pronged toolOne 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.

   a thunderbolt with three forks

   1 more example

   this fork of the river dries up during droughts

   Synonyms: branch, prong

5. figurativelydecision-makingA point in time where one has to make a decision between two life paths.
   1. figurativelymetonymicallydecision-makingEither of the (figurative) paths thus taken.
6. (software development, content management, data management) A departure from having a single source of truth (SSOT), sometimes intentionally but usually unintentionally.
   1. figurativelymetonymicallyby abstractionAny of the pieces/versions (of software, content, or data sets) thus created.

      Antonyms: single source of truth, SSOT

   2. figurativelyby abstractioncomputingThe 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.
   3. figurativelyby abstractioncomputingAny 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.

   4. figurativelyby abstraction; content management; content managementThe splitting of the coverage of a topic (within a corpus of content) into two or more pieces.

      A content fork may be intentional (as from a schism about goals) or unintentional (merely from a lack of reorganizing, so far).

   5. figurativelyby abstraction; content management; content management; content managementAny of the pieces/versions of content thus created.
   6. figurativelyby abstractionbusinessA split in a blockchain resulting from protocol disagreements, or a branch of the blockchain resulting from such a split.

      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

7. board gamesThe simultaneous attack of two adversary pieces with one single attacking piece (especially a knight).
8. UKvulgarThe crotch.
9. colloquialA forklift.

   Are you qualified to drive a fork?

10. 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!

11. by abstraction from a pronged tool's shapecyclingIn a bicycle or motorcycle, the portion of the frameset holding the front wheel, allowing the rider to steer and balance, also called front fork.

    The fork can be equipped with a suspension on mountain bikes.

12. The upper front brow of a saddle bow, connected in the tree by the two saddle bars to the cantle on the other end.

    Synonyms: swell, pommel

13. file systemscomputingA set of data associated with an individual file in some file systems.

    resource fork

    1 more example

    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

14. obsoleteA gallows.

    They had run through all punishments, and just 'scaped the fork

    a. 1680, Samuel Butler, Characters

present singular third person forks · participle present forking · participle past forked · past forked

1. ambitransitiveTo divide into two or more branches or copies.

   A road, a tree, or a stream forks.

   1. ambitransitivecomputingTo 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

      1 more example

      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

   2. ambitransitivecomputingTo 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

      1 more example

      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

   3. ambitransitivetransitivecomputingTo 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

2. transitiveTo move with a fork (as hay or food).

   forking the sheaves on the high-laden cart

   1844, John Wilson, Essay on the Genius, and Character of Burns

   1 more example

   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

3. transitiveTo apply a fork to.

   forking the soil

   1 more example

   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

4. UKtransitiveTo kick someone in the crotch.
5. intransitiveTo shoot into blades, as corn does.

   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

6. board gamesTo simultaneously attack two opposing pieces with a single attacking piece.
7. euphemistictransitiveEuphemistic form of fuck.

   They were forking each other in the back room.

plural forks · alternative forcque

1. businessThe bottom of a sump into which the water of a mine drains.

present singular third person forks · participle present forking · participle past forked · past forked · alternative forcque

1. transitivebusinessTo bale a shaft dry.

   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