furcate

1. not comparableForked, branched; divided at one end into parts.

   Synonyms: cloven, forked

present singular third person furcates · participle present furcating · participle past furcated · past furcated

1. To fork or branch out.

   Descending keel of the pronotum, which divides into two furcating lamella

   1836, Hermann Burmeister, A Manual of entomology, page 641

   3 more examples

   But that which I believe yields a great deal of our turpentine, is the fir-tree or deal, which is a coniferous tree, evergreen, whose cones are of the lesser sort, having long leaves, either that whose leaves encompass and cover the branches, bearing long cones hanging downwards as she male fir-tree or pitch-tree; or that whose leaves grow from each side of the stalk, being more flat than those of yew, green on the upper side, and whitish underneath, furcated at the end, bearing cones shorter and thicker, growing erect, as the female fir-tree.

   1700 May 17, John Houghton, Husbandry and trade improv'd, number 408

   These ridges are prominent, about the thickness of a coarse thread, very numerous, irregular, and run into one another, but towards the bottom, always furcate or divide.

   1778, Emanuel Mendes Da Costa, Historia naturalis testaceorum Britanniaeor, or The British conchology, page 173

   In Dyticus it even furcates, and with both prongs of the fork it encloses the intestine, and lower down the nervous cord

   1836, Hermann Burmeister, A Manual of entomology, page 239