cleavage

The act of cleaving or the state of being cleft.

Mineral cleavage is a property of cohesion. The cleavage of the particles themselves and its attitude with reference to the plane of the greatest and mean dimensional axes help to determine the perfection of rock cleavage. The more nearly parallel to the greater dimensions of the particle, and the better the mineral cleavage, the better the rock cleavage produced.

[…] the forces — the internal cleavages over class differences, the desire for "the good life," the white racist flight from the die schwartze — which shattered Jewish working-class community in the generation before mine.

The hollow or separation between a woman's breasts, especially as revealed by a low neckline.

Holonym: décolletage

Low-cut Restoration costumes worn by the Misses Lockwood and Roc (see cut) display too much "cleavage" (Johnston Office trade term for the shadowed depression dividing an actress' bosom into two distinct sections).

Any similar separation between two body parts, such as the buttocks or toes.

Half an hour later, she was staring at a large bottom-cleavage, which was protruding from under the bed. / 'Ohhh Kayyy. Here we go. This is basically your problem.' / Olivia took a few steps back as the bottom-cleavage started wriggling out towards her. Connor the counter-surveillance expert pulled himself awkwardly to his knees, […]

Brenda lifted the top off a shoebox and dug beneath the tissue paper, unearthing a two-toned, turquoise-and-cream, high-heeled pump. "This is one of my favorites," she said, balancing it in the palm of her hand. "I love shoes that show toe cleavage." / "Toe cleavage?" / Brenda kicked off a leather sandal, slipped her foot into the pump, and pointed to the baseline of her toes peeking through. "That's toe cleavage!"

The repeated division of a cell into daughter cells after mitosis.

[C]itellate annelids (leeches + oligochaetes) provide solid ground for comparative analyses, because they form a monophyletic group within the paraphyletic polychaetes[…]. […] The unequal cleavage of the zygote followed by the unequal cleavage of the CD cell is critical for D-quadrant specification since the cytoplasmic determinants present in teloplasm are segregated to the larger CD cell at first asymmetric cleavage and then to the larger D cell at the second asymmetric cleavage[…].

The splitting of a large molecule into smaller ones.

Carotenoid cleavage oxygenases (CCOs) are a class of enzymes that oxidatively cleave carotenoids into apocarotenoids. Carotenoid cleavage oxygenases have been identified in plants and animals and produce a wide range of cleavage products. […] Two of the three enzymes showed cleavage of β, β-carotene at the 9,10 and 15,15' position, respectively.