fold

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /fəʊld/
• (General American) enPR: fōld, IPA^(key): /foʊld/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Homophone: foaled
• Rhymes: -əʊld

From Middle English folden, from Old English fealdan, from Proto-Germanic *falþaną (“to fold”), from Proto-Indo-European *pel- (“to fold”).

fold (third-person singular simple present folds, present participle folding, simple past folded or (obsolete) feld, past participle folded or (rare) 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. (intransitive) To become folded; to form folds.

   Cardboard doesn't fold very easily.

4. (intransitive, informal) To fall over; to be crushed.

   The chair folded under his enormous weight.

5. (transitive) To enclose within folded arms (see also enfold).
   • 1897, Bram Stoker, Dracula Chapter 21

     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.

6. (intransitive) To give way on a point or in an argument.
7. (intransitive, poker) To withdraw from betting.

   With no hearts in the river and no chance to hit his straight, he folded.

8. (intransitive, by extension) To withdraw or quit in general.
9. (transitive, cooking) To stir gently, with a folding action.

   Fold the egg whites into the batter.

10. (intransitive, business) Of a company, to cease to trade.

    The company folded after six quarters of negative growth.

11. To double or lay together, as the arms or the hands.

    He folded his arms in defiance.

12. To cover or wrap up; to conceal.
    • 1594, William Shakespeare, Lvcrece (First Quarto), London: Printed by Richard Field, for Iohn Harrison, […], OCLC 236076664:

      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.

• (bend (thin material) over): bend, crease
• (fall over): fall over
• (give way on a point or in an argument): concede, give in, give way, yield

• unfold

fold (plural folds)

1. An act of folding.

   Synonyms: bending, creasing

2. A bend or crease.

   Synonyms: bend, crease

   • Francis Bacon

     mummies […] shrouded in a number of folds of linen

   • J. D. Dana

     Folds are most common in the rocks of mountainous regions.

3. Any correct move in origami.
4. (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.

5. (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.

6. That which is folded together, or which enfolds or envelops; embrace.
   • Shakespeare

     Shall from your neck unloose his amorous fold.

7. (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.
8. (computing, programming) In 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.

• above the fold
• below the fold
• centrefold, centerfold

From Middle English fold, fald, from Old English fald, falæd, falod (“fold, stall, stable, cattle-pen”), 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”).

fold (plural folds)

1. A pen or enclosure for sheep or other domestic animals.

   Synonyms: enclosure, pen, penfold, pinfold

   • John Milton

     Leaps o'er the fence with ease into the fold.

   • 1913, Robert Barr, chapter 4, in Lord Stranleigh Abroad‎:

     “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. …”

2. (collective) A group of sheep or goats.

   Synonym: flock

3. (figuratively) Home, family.

   Synonyms: home, family

4. (religion, Christian) A church congregation, a group of people who adhere to a common faith and habitually attend a given church; the Christian church as a whole, the flock of Christ.

   Synonyms: congregation, flock

   • John, X, 16

     Other sheep I have which are not of this fold.

5. A group of people with shared ideas or goals or who live or work together.

   Synonym: cohort

   • 2013, Phil McNulty, "", BBC Sport, 1 September 2013:

     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.

6. (obsolete) A boundary or limit.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Creech to this entry?)

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

1. To confine animals in a fold.
   • John Milton

     The star that bids the shepherd fold,
     Now the top of heaven doth hold.

From Middle English, from Old English folde (“earth, land, country, district, region, territory, ground, soil, clay”), from Proto-Germanic *fuldǭ (“ground, plain”), from Proto-Indo-European *pel- (“field, plain”). Cognate with Norwegian and Icelandic fold (“land, earth, meadow”).

fold (uncountable)

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

• IPA^(key): /fɔl/, [fʌlˀ]

from Old Norse faldr (“seam”).

fold c (singular definite folden, plural indefinite folder)

1. fold
2. crease
3. wrinkle

fold c (singular definite folden, plural indefinite folde)

1. fold, pen

fold n

1. multiple

See folde (“to fold”).

fold

1. imperative of folde

• fold on the Danish Wikipedia.Wikipedia ^da

From Old Norse fold.

• IPA^(key): [fɔlt]
• Rhymes: -ɔlt

fold f (genitive singular foldar, nominative plural foldir)

1. (poetic) earth, ground, land

fold

1. imperative of folde

From a common Germanic root; probably from the same Proto-Indo-European root as English field and fold (as in "pen for animals", "of the fold").

fold f

1. (poetic) earth, land; field
   • The Alvíssmál, verses 9 and 10:

     Hvé sú jǫrð heitir, / er liggr fyr alda sonum / heimi hverjum í?

     […] Jǫrð heitir með mǫnnum, / en með Ásum fold, / kalla vega Vanir.

     How is the earth named, / that which lies before the sons of men, / in each of the worlds?

     {{..}} "Earth" it is named among men, / but among the Æsir "Field", / the Vanir call it "Ways".

• fold in Geir T. Zoëga (1910) A Concise Dictionary of Old Icelandic, Oxford: Clarendon Press