What does cloven mean?
Cloven is an adjective describing something split or divided into two distinct parts, and it is overwhelmingly used of animal feet: cattle, sheep, goats and deer all have cloven hooves, each divided into two toes. The word derives from the old English verb cleave, meaning to split or cut apart, making it a rare surviving fragment of an ancient Germanic root. Beyond zoology, cloven has rich cultural weight. In the Hebrew Bible, the distinction between animals with fully split cloven hooves that chew the cud and those without underpins the kosher dietary rules, so the word carries ritual significance. In European folklore and art, the Devil was conventionally given a single cloven hoof instead of a human foot, a visual tell that became one of the most recognizable symbols of evil in Western tradition. Today the word survives mainly in these fixed phrases and remains a compact, vivid piece of vocabulary.
adjectiveSplit or divided into two parts, especially in the way a hoof is divided into two toes. Most commonly encountered in the fixed phrase 'cloven hoof' or 'cloven foot'.
- Split or divided into two parts; especially having a hoof divided into two toes, as in cattle, goats, sheep and deer.
"The goat left a distinctive track in the mud, the mark of its cloven hooves clearly visible."
"Tracks in the snow showed the unmistakable double imprint of a deer's cloven hooves."
"Medieval painters marked the Devil with a single cloven hoof to betray his true nature."
The Devil is traditionally depicted with a cloven hoof — one of the oldest visual shorthand cues in Western art that a figure isn't quite human.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of cloven
Cloven comes from the Old English verb clēofan, meaning to split or cut apart, which descends from Proto-Germanic *kleuban. It originally served as the past participle of this verb, alongside the forms cleft and clove, and gradually settled into use purely as an adjective describing things split into two. Its Germanic cousins include modern English cleave and cleave's derivative cleavage, though the spice word clove is an unrelated borrowing from Latin clavus, meaning nail.
Related word forms
How cloven is actually used
Almost always appears attributively before a noun ('cloven hoof', 'cloven foot'); it rarely stands alone after a linking verb. The word carries strong biblical, zoological, and folkloric connotations — kosher dietary law distinguishes animals with fully split cloven hooves, while the Devil's cloven hoof is a staple of European folklore. Register is neutral to slightly literary.
Easily confused with cloven
A clove is a dried spice flower bud (from Latin clavus 'nail'), whereas cloven means split into two parts (from Old English clēofan 'to split') — entirely separate words despite similar spelling.
Cleft can be both an adjective meaning split and a noun for a fissure or indentation, while cloven specifically describes something divided into two parts, most often hooves.