Cleft - cloven

’’’Cleft’’’ and ’’’cloven’’’ are the two accepted variant forms of the -ed participle of the verb ‘to cleave’ meaning ‘to split’. Either may be used with the auxiliary verbs ‘to have’ and ‘to be’; but there are conventional differences in their uses as participial adjectives. (There is only a very rare, negligible, use of ’’’cloven’’’ as a noun, although ‘a cleft' is fairly common to label any gap as the result of splitting, or figurative equivalents. It is a way of naming the vulva, or pudendal cleft.)

• As participial adjectives,
• ’’’cleft’’’ is used with such physical processes as cleft lips and cleft palates ('orofacial clefts'); the use 'cloven palate' is extremely rare ('cloven lip' is slightly more common, because of its use in the names of various plants): in current academic English these would be judged errors. A cleft stick was literally a stick spolit at one end used to carry paper messages ('letters') by 'native runners' betweeen colonizing officials in British imperial Africa in the ninetenth century; nit is currently more often used figuratively to mean 'a situation neither of whose outcomes will be beneficial' (cf. hortns of a dilemma).
• ’’’’cloven’’’ is used with animal feet, normally “the divided hoof of ruminant quadrupeds” (‘’OED’’). This came to be associated above all with Satan and the other devils. The link appears to bebecause Satan wasidentified with the Greek god Pan, portrayed with the feet andl,egs of a goat.