Fork (pronounced fawrk)
(1) An instrument having two or more tines (popularly
called prongs), for holding, lifting, etc., as an implement for handling food
or any of various agricultural tools.
(2) Something resembling or suggesting this in form or
conceptually.
(3) As tuning fork, instruments used (1) in the tuning of
musical instruments and (2) by audiologists and others involved in the study or
treatment of hearing.
(4) In machinery, a type of yoke; a pronged part of any
device.
(5) A generalized description of the division into
branches.
(6) In physical geography and cartography, by
abstraction, the point or part at which a thing, as a river or a road, divides
into branches; any of the branches into which a thing divides (and used by some
as a convention to describe a principal tributary of a river.
(7) In horology, (in a lever escapement) the forked end
of the lever engaging with the ruby pin.
(8) In bicycle & motorcycle design, the support of
the front wheel axles, having the shape of a two-tined fork.
(9) In archery, the barbed head of an arrow.
(10) To pierce, raise, pitch, dig etc, with a fork.
(11) Metonymically (and analogous with the prongs of a
pronged tool), to render something to resemble a fork or describe something using
the shape as a metaphor.
(12) In chess, to maneuver so as to place two opponent's
pieces under simultaneous attack by the same piece (most associated with moves
involving the knight).
(13) In computer programming, to modify a software’s source
code to create a version sufficiently different to be considered a separate path
of development.
(14) To turn as indicated at a fork in a road, path etc.
(15) Figuratively, a point in time when a decision is
taken.
(16) In fulminology, as "forked lightning" the
type of atmospheric discharge of electricity which hits the ground in a bolt.
(17) In software development, content management &
data management, figuratively (by abstraction, from a physical fork), a departure
from having a single source of truth (SSOT) (unintentionally as originally
defined but later also applied where the variation was intentional; metonymically,
any of the instances of software, data sets etc, thus created.
(18) In World War II era British military jargon, the male
crotch, used to indicate the genital area as a point of vulnerability in physical
assault.
(19) in occupational slang, a clipping of forklift; any of
the blades of a forklift (or, in plural, the set of blades), on which the goods
to be raised are loaded.
(20) In saddlery, the upper front brow of a saddle bow,
connected in the tree by the two saddle bars to the cantle on the other end.
(21) In slang, a gallows (obsolete).
(22) As a transitive verb, a euphemistic for “fuck” one
of the variations on f***, ***k etc and used typically to circumvent text-based
filters.
(23) In underground, extractive mining, the bottom of a
sump into which the water of a mine drains; to bale a shaft dry.
Pre-1000: From the Middle English forke (digging fork), from the Old English force & forca (pitchfork,
forked instrument, forked weapon; forked instrument used to torture), from the Proto-West
Germanic furkō (fork), from the Latin
furca (pitchfork, forked stake;
gallows, beam, stake, support post, yoke) of uncertain origin. The Middle
English was later reinforced by the Anglo-Norman & Old Northern French forque (it was from the Old French forche which French gained fourche), also from the Latin. It was cognate with the Old Frisian forke, the North Frisian forck (fork), the Dutch vork (fork), the Danish vork (fork) and the German Forke (pitchfork). The evolved Middle English form displaced the native
Old English gafol, ġeafel & ġeafle (fork) (and the apparently
regionally specific forcel (pitchfork)
though the use from circa 1200 to mean “forked stake or post used as a prop
when erecting a gallows” did for a while endure, probably because of the
long-life of the architectural plans for a structure which demanded no change
or functional improvement.
The forks of The Latin furca (in
its primary sense of “fork”) may be from the primitive Indo-European gherk &
gherg (fork) although etymologists
have never traced any explanation for the addition of the -c-, something which
remains mysterious even if the word was influenced by the Proto-Germanic furkaz
& firkalaz (stake, stick, pole,
post) which was from the primitive Indo-European perg- (pole, post). If such
a link existed, it would relate the word to the Old English forclas pl (bolt), the Old Saxon ferkal (lock, bolt, bar), the Old Norse forkr (pole, staff, stick), the Norwegian
fork (stick, bat) and the Swedish fork (pole). The descendants in other languages include
the Sranan Tongo forku, the Dutch vork, the Japanese フォーク (fōku), the Danish korf, the
Kannada ಫೋರ್ಕ್ (phōrk), the Korean 포크 (pokeu), the Maori paoka,
the Tamil போர்க் (pōrk) and the Telugu ఫోర్క్ (phōrk). In many languages, the previous form was
retained for most purposes while the English fork was adopted in the context of
software development.
Although visitors from Western Europe discovered the novelty of the table fork in Constantinople as early as the eleventh century, the civilizing influence from Byzantium seems not to have come into use among the English nobility until the 1400s and the evidence suggest it didn’t come into common use before the early seventeenth century. Historians of food note word seems first to have appeared in this context in an inventory of household goods from 1430 and they suggest, because their influence in culinary matters was strongest, it was probably from the Old North French forque. It came to be applied to rivers from 1753 and of roads by 1839. The use in bicycle design began in 1871 and this was adopted directly within twenty years when the first motorcycles appeared. The chess move was first so-described in the 1650s while the old slang, forks "the two forefingers" was from 1812 and endures to this day as “the fork”. In the world of cryptocurrencies, fork has been adopted with fetish-like enthusiasm to refer to (1) a split in the blockchain resulting from protocol disagreements, or (2) a branch of the blockchain resulting from such a split.
The verb dates from the early fourteenth century in the sense of (1) “to divide in branches, go separate ways" & (2) "disagree, be inconsistent", both derived from the noun. The transitive meaning "raise or pitch with a fork" is from 1812, used most frequently in the forms forked & forking while the slang verb phrase “fork (something) over” is from 1839 while “fork out” (give over) is from 1831). The now obsolete legal slang “forking” in the forensic sense of a "disagreement among witnesses" dates from the turn of the fifteenth century. The noun forkful was an agricultural term from the 1640s while the specialized fourchette (in reference to anatomical structures, from French fourchette (diminutive of fourche (a fork)) was from 1754. The noun pitchfork (fork for lifting and pitching hay etc.) described the long-used implement constructed commonly with a long handle and two or three prongs first in the mid fourteenth century, altered (by the influence of pichen (to throw, thrust), from the early thirteenth century Middle English pic-forken, from pik (source of pike). The verb use meaning "to lift or throw with a pitchfork," is noted from 1837. The spork, an eating utensil which was fashioned by making several long indents in the bowl to create prongs debuted in 1909.
Der Gableschwanz Teufl: The Lockheed P-38 Lightning (1939-1945).
The idiomatic “speak with forked tongue” to indicate duplicitous
speech dates from 1885 and was an invention of US English though reputedly
influenced by phases settlers learned in their interactions with first nations
peoples (then called “Red Indians”). The
earlier “double tongue” (a la “two-faced”) in the same sense was from the
fifteenth century. Fork as a clipping of
the already truncated fork-lift (1953) fom the fork-lift truck (1946), appears
to have enter the vernacular circa 1994.
The adjective forked (branched or divided in two parts) was the past-participle
adjective from the verb and came into use early in the fourteenth century. It was applied to roads in the 1520s and more
generally within thirty years while the use in the sixteenth and seventeenth
century with a suggestion of "cuckold" (on the notion of "horned")
is long obsolete. During the World War
II, the Luftwaffe’s (German air force) military slang for the twin-boomed Lockheed
P-38 Lightning was Der Gableschwanz Teufl
(the fork-tailed devil). Applied in many
contexts (literally & figuratively), inventions (with and without hyphens) include
fork-bomb, fork-buffet, fork-dinner, fork-head, rolling-fork, fork-over, fork-off & fork-up.
Spork from a flatware set made for Adolf Hitler's (1889-1945; German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) fiftieth birthday, sold at auction in 2018 for £12,500. The items had been discovered in England in a house once owned by a senior military officer, the assumption being they were looted in 1945 (“souveniring” in soldier's parlance), the items all bearing the Nazi eagle, swastika and Hitler's initials. Auction houses can be inconsistent in their descriptions of sporks and in some cases they're listed as splayds, the designs sometimes meaning it's a fine distinction.
He's remembered now for (1) his role in building up the German Navy, triggering events which would play some part in the coming for World War I (1914-1918) and (2) being the namesake for the Bismarck class battleship Tirpitz which although it hardly ever took to the high seas and fired barely a shot in anger, merely by being moored in Norwegian fjords, it compelled the British Admiralty to watch it with a mix of awe and dread, necessitating keeping in home waters a number of warships badly needed elsewhere. Such was the threat it represented, just the mistaken belief she was steaming into the path of a convoy of merchant ships caused the Admiralty to order a convoy to “scatter” (ie separate from the escorting warships), resulting in heavy losses. After a number of attempts, in 1944, she was finally sunk in a raid by Royal Air Force (RAF) bombers. He’s remembered also for (3) his distinctive twin-forked beard.