bifurcate
verb
bī-ˈfər-
Did you know?
Yogi Berra, the baseball great who was noted for his head-scratching quotes, is purported to have said, "When you come to a fork in the road, take it." Berra's advice might not offer much help when you're making tough decisions in life, but perhaps it will help you remember bifurcate. A road that bifurcates splits in two, like the one in Berra's adage. Other things can bifurcate (or be bifurcated) as well, such as an organization that splits, or is split, into two factions. Bifurcate comes from the Latin adjective bifurcus, meaning "two-pronged," a combination of the prefix bi- ("two") and the noun furca ("fork"). Furca, as you may have guessed, is also an ancestor of fork, which refers to the handy utensil that can (in a pinch) help us—as Berra might say—to cut our pizza in four pieces when we're not hungry enough to eat six.
Examples of bifurcate in a Sentence
Dan Primack, Axios, 27 Feb. 2025
Once again the stock tape was heavily bifurcated with distinct groups leading and lagging.
—Jeff Marks,morgan Chittum,paulina Likos, CNBC, 26 Feb. 2025
And in the men’s wear versions of all the above that came after (the show was oddly bifurcated, so rather than weaving the men’s and women’s wear together, as is usually the case in dual-gendered shows, the men’s followed the women’s — in both reality and ideas).
—Vanessa Friedman, New York Times, 26 Feb. 2025
Either way, that both these possibilities suddenly exist on screen bifurcates the story between two equally didactic possibilities when its strengths lie in lingering uncertainties.
—Siddhant Adlakha, Variety, 18 Feb. 2025
See All Example Sentences for bifurcate
Cite this Entry
“Bifurcate.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bifurcate. Accessed 24 Mar. 2025.
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bifurcate
intransitive verb
bī-ˈfər-
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