Bifurcating Definition & Meaning

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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." Yogi's advice might not offer much help when making tough decisions in life, but perhaps it will help you remember bifurcate. A road that bifurcates splits in two like the one in Yogi's adage. Other things can bifurcate as well, such as an organization that splits into two factions. Bifurcate derives from the Latin bifurcus, meaning "two-pronged," a combination of the prefix bi- ("two") and the noun furca ("fork"). Furca, as you can probably tell, gave us our word fork.

Examples of bifurcate in a Sentence

The stream bifurcated into two narrow winding channels. bifurcate a beam of light

Recent Examples on the Web He was meant to chat with Jeremy Renner, but when the Hawkeye star failed to show Brolin had no choice but to bifurcate himself and occupy both seats. — Christian Holub, EW.com, 13 June 2022 Such a strategy should not bifurcate experiences between the physical and digital worlds, but rather employ all the tools at their disposal to harmonize those channels and allow retailers to fulfill customer demands more fluidly. — Guy Courtin, Forbes, 28 Oct. 2021 Google’s decision Wednesday to move away from individualized user tracking in its own ad operations means digital advertising could bifurcate, with a Google ecosystem that has one set of rules and the rest of the web following another. — Patience Haggin, WSJ, 4 Mar. 2021 What is needed, scientists said in interviews, is for the city or another entity to essentially bifurcate the current coronavirus testing process. — Joseph Goldstein, New York Times, 3 Feb. 2021 That episode taught many to bifurcate their CNN-watching and market-tracking brains. — Justina Lee, Bloomberg.com, 15 June 2020 But the approach has only exacerbated capital outflows, bifurcated the market and widened bid-ask spreads, giving way to erratic price swings. — Donal Griffin, Bloomberg.com, 24 May 2020 In August 2019, India also bifurcated the state into two union territories: Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh. — Riyaz Wani, Quartz India, 6 Apr. 2020 The world seemed to bifurcate into people who still had jobs (for now) and those who didn’t, with the former anxiously looking for ways to cover for the latter, who were now scrambling for new sources of income, any income. — Emily Witt, The New Yorker, 22 Mar. 2020 See More

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'bifurcate.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.