fold

Etymology 1

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

verb

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).
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.
   8 Jan 2020, Felicity Cloake in The Guardian, How to make the perfect gluten-free chocolate brownies – recipe 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.
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.

noun

1. An act of folding.
   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.
2. A bend or crease.
   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
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.
   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
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.
   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
6. That which is folded together, or which enfolds or envelops; embrace.
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. (functional programming) Any of a family of higher-order functions that process a data structure recursively to build up a value.
   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
9. (programming) A section of source code that can be collapsed out of view in an editor to aid readability.

Etymology 2

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”).

noun

1. A pen or enclosure for sheep or other domestic animals.
   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. (collective) A group of sheep or goats.
3. (figurative) Home, family.
4. (Christianity) 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.
5. (figurative) A group of people with shared ideas or goals or who live or work together.
   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. 1 September 2013, 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. 2023-07-06, Annalena Baerbock, “Russia’s war on Ukraine has forced us in Germany to think differently about our role in the world”, in The Guardian, →ISSN

verb

1. To confine animals in a fold.

Etymology 3

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

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