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Two-month-old Onyxx Cooley was born with a cleft palate but apparently otherwise healthy.—Audrey Dutton, ProPublica, 26 Aug. 2025 Mary! Fun fact about this sweet girl: She was born with a cleft palate.—Trish Stinger, Kansas City Star, 9 July 2025 There’s one story of a boy with a cleft palate who adopted a dog that had a cleft palate too.—Lauren Brown West-Rosenthal, Parents, 11 Apr. 2025 The organization provides free surgeries for children with cleft palate and similar birth defects.—Elizabeth Marie Himchak, San Diego Union-Tribune, 2 Mar. 2025 See All Example Sentences for cleft palate
: a split in the roof of the mouth that occurs as a birth defect
Medical Definition
cleft palate
noun
: congenital fissure of the roof of the mouth produced by failure of the two maxillae to unite during embryonic development and often associated with cleft lip
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