cleft vs kerf

cleft

noun
  • An opening, fissure, or V-shaped indentation made by or as if by splitting. 

  • A piece made by splitting. 

  • A disease of horses; a crack on the band of the pastern. 

verb
  • To syntactically separate a prominent constituent from the rest of the clause that concerns it, such as threat in "The threat which I saw but which he didn't see, was his downfall." 

adj
  • split, divided, or partially divided into two. 

kerf

noun
  • The groove or slit created by cutting or sawing something; an incision. 

  • The portion or quantity (e.g. of wood, hay, turf, wool, etc.) removed or cut off in a given stroke. 

  • The distance between diverging saw teeth. 

  • The flattened, cut-off end of a branch or tree; a stump or sawn-off cross-section. 

verb
  • To cut a piece of wood or other material with several kerfs to allow it to be bent. 

How often have the words cleft and kerf occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )