Definition of "fold"

fold¹

/ˈfəʊld/

verb
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.
3. (intransitive) To become folded; to form folds.
4. (intransitive, informal) To fall over; to collapse; to be crushed.
5. (transitive) To enclose within folded arms (see also enfold).
  Quotations
  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.
  1897, Bram Stoker, chapter 21, in Dracula, New York, N.Y.: Modern Library
6. (intransitive) To give way on a point or in an argument.
7. (intransitive, poker) To withdraw from betting.
8. (intransitive, by extension) To withdraw or quit in general.
9. (transitive, cooking) To stir (semisolid ingredients) gently, with an action as if folding over a solid.
  Quotations
  if you want to make life really easy for yourself, may I point you in the direction of Sunflour’s recipe, which folds four eggs and 150g ground almonds into 500g chocolate spread.
  8 Jan 2020, Felicity Cloake in The Guardian, How to make the perfect gluten-free chocolate brownies – recipe
10. (intransitive, business) Of a company, to cease to trade.
11. To double or lay together, as the arms or the hands.
12. To cover or wrap up; to conceal.
  Quotations
  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.
  1594, William Shakespeare, Lucrece (First Quarto), London: […] Richard Field, for Iohn Harrison, […]
noun
plural folds
1. An act of folding.
  1. Any correct move in origami.
2. That which is folded together, or which enfolds or envelops.
  1. A bend or crease.
    Quotations
    […] There sat the Shadow fear’d of man;Who broke our fair companionship,⁠And spread his mantle dark and cold;And wrapt thee formless in the fold, […]
    1850, [Alfred, Lord Tennyson], In Memoriam, London: Edward Moxon, […], canto XXII, page 37
  2. A layer, typically of folded or wrapped cloth.
    Quotations
    […] the Ancient Ægyptian Mummies, were ſhrowded in a Number of Folds of Linnen, beſmeared with Gummes, in manner of Seare-Cloth; […]
    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 […], paragraph 771, page 194
  3. A clasp, embrace.
    Quotations
    […] the weake wanton Cupid Shall from your necke vnlooſe his amorous fould, […]
    c. 1602, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Troylus and Cressida”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act III, scene iii]
  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.
  Quotations
  The folds are most abrupt to the eastward; to the west, they diminish in boldness, and become gentle undulations
  1863, James Dwight Dana, Manual of Geology
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.
  Quotations
  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.
  2007, Jennifer Niederst Robbins, Learning Web Design: A Beginner's Guide to (X)HTML, StyleSheets, and Web Graphics, "O'Reilly Media, Inc.", page 43
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.
  Quotations
  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.
  1999, Jared M. Spool, Web Site Usability: A Designer's Guide, Morgan Kaufmann, page 77
7. (functional programming) Any of a family of higher-order functions that process a data structure recursively to build up a value.
  Quotations
  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.
  2010, Richard Bird, Pearls of Functional Algorithm Design, Cambridge University Press, page 168
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.

fold²

/ˈfəʊld/

noun
plural folds
1. A pen or enclosure for sheep or other domestic animals.
  Quotations
  Leaps o're the fence with ease into the fold.
  1667, John Milton, “Book IV”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], […]; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873,
  “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. …”
  1913, Robert Barr, chapter 4, in Lord Stranleigh Abroad‎
2. Any enclosed piece of land belonging to a farm or mill; yard, farmyard.
3. An enclosure or dwelling generally.
4. (collective) A group of sheep or goats, particularly those kept in a given enclosure.
5. (figuratively) Home, family.
6. (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.
  Quotations
  And other sheepe I haue, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall heare my voyce; and there shall be one fold, and one shepheard.
  1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], John 10:16
7. (figuratively) A group of people with shared ideas or goals or who live or work together.
  Quotations
  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.
  2013 September 1, Phil McNulty, BBC Sport
  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 […]
  2021, Angela Kuttner Botelho, German Jews and the Persistence of Jewish Identity in Conversion: Writing the Jewish Self, Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG, page 37
  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.
  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
verb
third-person singular simple present folds, present participle folding, simple past and past participle folded
1. To confine animals in a fold.
  Quotations
  The star that bids the shepherd fold,Now the top of heaven doth hold.
  1634 October 9 (first performance), [John Milton], edited by H[enry] Lawes, A Maske Presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634: […], London: […] [Augustine Matthews] for Hvmphrey Robinson, […], published 1637; reprinted as Comus: […] (Dodd, Mead & Company’s Facsimile Reprints of Rare Books; Literature Series; no. I), New York, N.Y.: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1903,
  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.
  1900, James George Frazer, The Golden Bough, volume 3, page 289

fold³

/ˈfəʊld/

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

Definition of "fold"

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fold2

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fold3

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