Definition of "cleaving"

cleaving

verb
1. present participle and gerund of cleave
  Quotations
  The silence of a summer night is now sleeping on its bosom, where the bright stars are mirrored, as if in its depths they had another home and another heaven. A spirit, cleaving air midway between the two, might have paused to ask which was sea, and which was sky.
  1832, Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Heath's Book of Beauty, 1833, The Enchantress, page 1
adjective
not comparable
1. That cleaves
noun
plural cleavings
1. The act of one who cleaves, splits, or severs.
  Quotations
  Many of Spenser's readers today find the cleavings and reunifications of Redcrosse and Una presenting a psychodrama of mental fragmentation […]
  2010, Greg Kucich, Keats, Shelley, and Romantic Spenserianism, page 273
2. The act of one who cleaves, clings, or adheres.
  Quotations
  On all of them they renew their cleavings to God with love and delight.
  1813, John Owen, The grace and duty of being spiritually minded