Picture one heavy stroke that opens a thing along its own line. Not sawing, not tearing: the axe comes down, the log falls into two clean halves, and the faces are flat. Two details travel with that picture wherever the word goes. The break is sudden, and it follows a line the material already had. Everything in this map can be read as that stroke landing on something else.
From the word’s history
This cleave comes from Old English cleofan, to split or separate, from Proto-Germanic kleubana and a Proto-Indo-European root meaning to cut or slice. The splitting was there from the start.
這個 cleave 來自古英語 clēofan（劈開、分開），再往前是原始日耳曼語 kleubaną，最後追到印歐語根「切、削」。也就是說，「劈開」從一開始就是它的本義，後面的用法都是把這一記重擊搬到別的東西上。
Wiktionary (kaikki) etymology 1 supplied in this evidence packet, source_ref kaikki:3f6f69a190036ae4:800574174:34696
登入就可以看每一支怎麼連回核心畫面。