Cloven

I had a discussion with contributor MsMun about words that are their own antonyms. One such is 'cleave', meaning both to cling to and to split apart. From the little bit I have read, this is a word with ancient roots - right back in the proto-Indo-European language that was spoken seven or eight thousand years ago in the area north of the Black and Caspian seas

As I understand it, in Old English there were two different but similar words, in two different 'verb classes' meaning respectively 'cling' and 'split' and, in use, it was easy to distinguish which one was being used. It is the evolution from old, through middle, to modern English that has brought about their convergence to look and sound alike, relying on context and associated words to distinguish then

The different roots of the two meanings is also apparent on their past tense. The past participle of cleave, when it means 'cling', is always 'cleaved'. When it means 'split', 'cleaved' is still valid, but we have also retained the more archaic forms 'cleft' (often applied to rocks, or to a mal-formed palate), and 'cloven' (most usually paired with 'hoof' or 'hooved', especially during outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease, when it is always explained that the disease afflicts only cloven-hooved mammals)

It's hard to imagine what forces were powerful enough to rend a mature tree into two in this dramatic way. Lightening? Wind? Snow? Some combination of these in a specific order? However it came about, there must have been moments when it moved fast, but it has now reached a point where both halves are held fast

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