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Sunday November 16, 2003

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bifurcate \BY-fur-kayt; by-FUR-kayt\ , transitive verb:
1. To divide into two branches or parts.

intransitive verb:
1. To branch or separate into two parts.

adjective:
1. Divided into two branches or parts; forked.

There it was, a sliver of a million-dollar view: the red towers of the Golden Gate Bridge that bifurcated the waters, marking bay from ocean.
-- Amy Tan, The Bonesetter's Daughter

They were strolling up the paved walk which bifurcated the rolling front lawn of her house.
-- Erik Tarloff, The Man Who Wrote the Book

Increasingly, Canadian teachers are a bifurcated group -- either relative newcomers to the profession or experienced veterans.
-- Heather-Jane Robertson, "The Devil's in the Demographics.", Phi Delta Kappan, January 1999

Peed Onk is bravura writing -- the narrative bifurcates, offering exterior realism and the interior torment of the Mother.
-- Jon Saari, "Books", Antioch Review, Spring 1999

Riven continually confronts us with . . . visual echoes of its name, such as the giant dagger thrust into the landscape at one point, or the plate-tectonic fracturing of islands out of an implied unity, or even the bifurcate wing cases of the aptly named Riven beetles.
-- Stuart Moulthrop, "Misadventure: Future Fiction and the New Networks", Style, Summer 1999

Bifurcate comes from the past participle of Medieval Latin bifurcare, "to divide," from Latin bifurcus, "two-pronged," from bi- + furca, "fork."

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for bifurcate

 

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