Wiktionary

fold

See also: -fold, föld, and Föld

English

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English Wikipedia has an article on:
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Pronunciation

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Etymology 1

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The verb is from Middle English folden, from Old English fealdan, from Proto-West Germanic *falþan, from Proto-Germanic *falþaną (“to fold”), from Proto-Indo-European *pel- (“to fold”).

The noun is from Middle English folde,falde, itself derived from the verb.

Verb

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fold (third-person singular simple present folds, present participle folding, simple past folded, past participle folded or (obsolete) folden)

  1. (transitive) To bend (any thin material, such as paper) over so that it comes in contact with itself.
  2. (transitive) To make the proper arrangement (in a thin material) by bending.
    If you fold the sheets, they'll fit more easily in the drawer.
  3. (transitive) To draw or coil (one’s arms, a snake’s body, etc.) around something so as to enclose or embrace it.
  5. (transitive, cooking) To stir (semisolid ingredients) gently, with an action as if folding over a solid.
    Fold the egg whites into the batter.
  6. (intransitive) To become folded; to form folds.
    Cardboard doesn't fold very easily.
  8. (intransitive, informal) To fall over; to collapse or give way; to be crushed.
    Synonyms: buckle, cave, cave in, crumple
    The chair folded under his enormous weight.
  10. (intransitive) To give way on a point or in an argument.
    Synonyms: buckle; cave; cave in; crumple
  12. (intransitive, poker) To withdraw from betting.
    With no hearts in the river and no chance to hit his straight, he folded.
  14. (intransitive, by extension) To withdraw or quit in general.
  16. (intransitive) To fail, to collapse, to disband.
  18. (intransitive, business) Of a company, to cease to trade.
    The company folded after six quarters of negative growth.
  20. (transitive) To double or lay together (one’s arms, hands, wings, etc.) so as to overlap with each other.
    He folded his arms in defiance.
  21. (transitive, obsolete) To plait or mat (hair) together.
  23. (transitive) To enclose in a fold of material, to swathe, wrap up, cover, enwrap.
  24. (transitive) To enclose within folded arms, to clasp, to embrace (see also enfold).
    • 1897, Bram Stoker, chapter 21, in Dracula, New York, N.Y.: Modern Library, →OCLC:
      He put out his arms and folded her to his breast. And for a while she lay there sobbing. He looked at us over her bowed head, with eyes that blinked damply above his quivering nostrils. His mouth was set as steel.
  25. (transitive, figuratively) To cover up, to conceal.
    • 1594, William Shakespeare, Lucrece (First Quarto), London: […] Richard Field, for Iohn Harrison, […], →OCLC:
      I will not poyſon thee with my attaint, / Nor fold my fault in cleanly coin’d excuſes, / My ſable ground of ſinne I will not paint, / To hide the truth of this falſe nights abuſes.
  26. (transitive, obsolete) To ensnare, to capture.
  27. (transitive, computing) To split (a line of text) across multiple lines, to obey line length limitations.
    Antonym: unfold
Synonyms
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Antonyms
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Derived terms
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Terms derived from fold (verb)
Descendants
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  • ⇒ Czech: foldovat
Translations
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The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Translations to be checked

Noun

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fold (plural folds)

  1. An act of folding.
    Synonyms: bending, creasing
    give the bedsheets a fold before putting them in the cupboard.
    After two reraises in quick succession, John realised his best option was probably a fold.
    1. Any correct move in origami.
  2. That which is folded together, or which enfolds or envelops.
    1. A bend or crease.
      Synonyms: bend, crease
    2. A layer, typically of folded or wrapped cloth.
      Synonym: ply
      • 1631, Francis [Bacon], “VIII. Century.”, in Sylua Syluarum: Or A Naturall Historie. In Ten Centuries. […], 3rd edition, London: […] William Rawley […]; [p]rinted by J[ohn] H[aviland] for William Lee […], →OCLC, paragraph 771, page 194:
        […] the Ancient Ægyptian Mummies, were ſhrowded in a Number of Folds of Linnen, beſmeared with Gummes, in manner of Seare-Cloth; […]
    3. A clasp, embrace.
    4. A coil of a snake’s body.
    5. (obsolete) A wrapping or covering.
    6. One of the doorleaves of a folding door.
  3. A gentle curve of the ground; gentle hill or valley.
  4. (geology) The bending or curving of one or a stack of originally flat and planar surfaces, such as sedimentary strata, as a result of plastic (i.e. permanent) deformation.
    • 1863, James Dwight Dana, Manual of Geology:
      The folds are most abrupt to the eastward; to the west, they diminish in boldness, and become gentle undulations
  5. (newspapers) The division between the top and bottom halves of a broadsheet: headlines above the fold will be readable in a newsstand display; usually the fold.
    • 2007, Jennifer Niederst Robbins, Learning Web Design: A Beginner's Guide to (X)HTML, StyleSheets, and Web Graphics, "O'Reilly Media, Inc.", →ISBN, page 43:
      Newspaper editors know the importance of putting the most important information “above the fold,” that is, visible when the paper is folded and on the rack.
  6. (by extension, web design) The division between the part of a web page visible in a web browser window without scrolling; usually the fold.
    • 1999, Jared M. Spool, Web Site Usability: A Designer's Guide, Morgan Kaufmann, →ISBN, page 77:
      For example, a story that is "page I, above the fold" is considered very important news. In web page design, the fold signifies the place at which the user has to scroll down to get more information.
  7. (functional programming) Any of a family of higher-order functions that process a data structure recursively to build up a value.
    • 2010, Richard Bird, Pearls of Functional Algorithm Design, Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 168:
      It was Erik Meijer who coined the name hylomorphism to describe a computation that consists of a fold after an unfold. The unfold produces a data structure and the fold consumes it.
  8. (programming) A section of source code that can be collapsed out of view in an editor to aid readability.
  9. One individual part of something described as manifold, twofold, fourfold, etc.
Derived terms
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Translations
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The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Translations to be checked

Etymology 2

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The noun is from Middle English fold, fald, from Old English fald, falæd, falod (“fold, stall, stable, cattle-pen”), from Proto-West Germanic *falud, from Proto-Germanic *faludaz (“enclosure”).

Akin to Scots fald, fauld (“an enclosure for livestock”), Dutch vaalt (“dung heap”), Middle Low German valt, vālt (“an inclosed space, a yard”), Danish fold (“pen for herbivorous livestock”), Swedish fålla (“corral, pen, pound”).

The verb is from Late Middle English fooldyn, itself derived from the noun.

Noun

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fold (plural folds)

  2. A pen or enclosure for sheep or other domestic animals.
    Synonyms: enclosure, pen, penfold, pinfold
    • 1667, John Milton, “Book IV”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, →OCLC:
      Leaps o're the fence with ease into the fold.
    • 1913, Robert Barr, chapter 4, in Lord Stranleigh Abroad‎[1]:
      “I came down like a wolf on the fold, didn’t I ?  Why didn’t I telephone ?  Strategy, my dear boy, strategy. This is a surprise attack, and I’d no wish that the garrison, forewarned, should escape. …”
  3. Any enclosed piece of land belonging to a farm or mill; yard, farmyard.
  4. An enclosure or dwelling generally.
  5. (collective) A group of sheep or goats, particularly those kept in a given enclosure.
    Synonym: flock
  6. (figuratively) Home, family.
    Synonyms: home, family
  7. (Christianity) A church congregation, a group of people who adhere to a common faith and habitually attend a given church; also, the Christian church as a whole, the flock of Christ.
    Synonyms: congregation, flock
  8. (figuratively) A group of people with shared ideas or goals or who live or work together.
    Synonyms: cohort, community
    • 2013 September 1, Phil McNulty, BBC Sport:
      Having suffered the loss of Rooney just as he had returned to the fold, Moyes' mood will not have improved as Liverpool took the lead in the third minute.
    • 2021, Angela Kuttner Botelho, German Jews and the Persistence of Jewish Identity in Conversion: Writing the Jewish Self, Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG, →ISBN, page 37:
      Most recently, in his ambitious 2015 book, Leaving the Jewish Fold, Endelman significantly enlarges his purview in both time and space to broadly survey the phenomenon of Jewish conversion from early medieval to postmodern times […]
    • 2023 July 6, Annalena Baerbock, “Russia’s war on Ukraine has forced us in Germany to think differently about our role in the world”, in The Guardian‎[2], →ISSN:
      In a first phase of foreign policy, after 1945, my country sought to regain former enemies’ trust. We are forever grateful that they extended their hand to us, readmitting us into the global fold.
Derived terms
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Translations
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Verb

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fold (third-person singular simple present folds, present participle folding, simple past and past participle folded)

  1. (transitive) To confine (animals) in a fold, to pen in.
    • 1634 October 9 (first performance), [John Milton], edited by H[enry] Lawes, A Maske Presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634: […] [Comus], London: […] [Augustine Matthews] for Hvmphrey Robinson, […], published 1637, →OCLC; reprinted as Comus: […] (Dodd, Mead & Company’s Facsimile Reprints of Rare Books; Literature Series; no. I), New York, N.Y.: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1903, →OCLC:
      The star that bids the shepherd fold,
      Now the top of heaven doth hold.
    • 1900, James George Frazer, The Golden Bough, volume 3, page 289:
      On the same day [Midsummer Eve] people in the Isle of Man were wont to light fires to the windward of every field, so that the smoke might pass over the corn; and they folded their cattle and carried blazing furze or gorse round them several times.
  2. (transitive, figuratively) To include in a spiritual ‘flock’ or group of the saved, etc.
  3. (transitive) To place sheep on (a piece of land) in order to manure it.
Derived terms
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Etymology 3

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From Middle English folde, from Old English folde (“earth, land, country, district, region, territory, ground, soil, clay”), from Proto-Germanic *fuldǭ, *fuldō (“earth, ground; field; the world”). Cognate with Old Norse fold (“earth, land, field”), Norwegian and Icelandic fold (“land, earth, meadow”).

Noun

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fold (uncountable)

  2. (dialectal, poetic or obsolete) The Earth; earth; land, country.

Anagrams

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Danish

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Pronunciation

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Etymology 1

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from Old Norse faldr (“seam”).

Noun

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fold c (singular definite folden, plural indefinite folder)

  1. fold
  2. crease
  3. wrinkle
Inflection
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Declension of fold
common
gender 		singular plural
indefinite definite indefinite definite
nominative fold folden folder folderne
genitive folds foldens folders foldernes

Etymology 2

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From Old Danish fald, from Middle Low German valde, from Old Saxon *faled, from Proto-West Germanic *falud.

Noun

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fold c (singular definite folden, plural indefinite folde)

  1. fold, pen
Inflection
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Declension of fold
common
gender 		singular plural
indefinite definite indefinite definite
nominative fold folden folde foldene
genitive folds foldens foldes foldenes

Etymology 3

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From Old Norse -faldr.

Noun

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fold n

  1. multiple

Etymology 4

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See folde (“to fold”).

Verb

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fold

  1. imperative of folde

See also

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Icelandic

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Etymology

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From Old Norse fold.

Pronunciation

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Noun

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fold f (genitive singular foldar, nominative plural foldir)

  1. (poetic) earth, ground, land

Declension

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Declension of fold (feminine)
singular plural
indefinite definite indefinite definite
nominative fold foldin foldir foldirnar
accusative fold foldina foldir foldirnar
dative fold foldinni foldum foldunum
genitive foldar foldarinnar folda foldanna

Middle English

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Alternative forms

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Etymology

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From Old English fald, falæd, falod, from Proto-West Germanic *falud, from Proto-Germanic *faludaz.

Pronunciation

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Noun

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fold (plural foldes)

  1. A pen, enclosure, or shelter for domesticated animals.

Descendants

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References

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Norwegian Bokmål

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Verb

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fold

  1. imperative of folde

Old Norse

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Etymology

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From Proto-Germanic *fuldō (“earth, ground; field; the world”).

Noun

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fold f

  1. (poetic) earth, land; field
    • 9th c., Þjóðólfr of Hvinir, Ynglingatal, verse 5:
      Hitt vas fyrr, / at fold ruðu
      sverðberendr / sínum dróttni. […]
      […] It happened before, / that the sword-bearers
      reddened the ground / with [the blood of] their lord. […]
    • 900-1100, The Alvíssmál, verses 9 and 10:
      […] Hvé sú jǫrð heitir, / er liggr fyr alda sonum
      heimi hverjum í?
      10. Jǫrð heitir með mǫnnum,
      en með Ásum fold, / kalla vega Vanir.
      […] How is the earth named, / which lies before the sons of men,
      in each of the worlds?
      10. "Earth" it is named among men,
      but among the Æsir "Field", / the Vanir call it "Ways".

Declension

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Declension of fold (strong ō-stem, ar and ir-plurals)
feminine singular plural
indefinite definite indefinite definite
nominative fold foldin foldar, foldir foldarnar, foldirnar
accusative fold foldina foldar, foldir foldarnar, foldirnar
dative fold, foldu foldinni foldum foldunum
genitive foldar foldarinnar folda foldanna

Descendants

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Further reading

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  • Zoëga, Geir T. (1910) “fold”, in A Concise Dictionary of Old Icelandic, Oxford: Clarendon Press; also available at the Internet Archive
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