be in a cleft stick, 'cleft-palate', oblate, wainscot

On Monday even the prime minister of India, Manmohan Singh, congratulated the “Slumdog” team, along with the makers of another winning film, “Smile Pinki,” a short documentary about a village girl with a cleft palate. “The winners have done India proud,” Mr. Singh’s office said in a statement.

In the field of dentistry he was known for his invention of the oblate 扁圓 plate, a prosthetic device for people with cleft palate.

In a cleft stick

Meaning
In a position where advance and retreat are both impossible; in a fix.
Origin
When we cleave something we split it into two pieces and it is then said to be 'cleft' or 'cloven'. These archaic-sounding words aren't commonly used alone these days and only persist in phrases like 'cleft-palate', 'cloven-hoofed' and 'in a cleft stick'. Cleft sticks are those which are split at one end, i.e. forked sticks. These were used as simple tools for carrying small items such as bundles of paper or candles. Jonathan Swift makes a reference to such in his 'Directions to Servants' in Works, circa 1745:

"You may conveniently stick your candle in a bottle, or with a lump of butter against the wainscot, in a powder-horn, or in an old shoe, or in a cleft stick."

Definition

wainscot   [名詞]

1. 1
2. (1)(通例，パネル状の)室内壁面の板張り用材，(特にカシ材の)羽目板.
3. (2)腰羽目，腰板(dado).
4. (3)(特に木材の)羽目板張り(lining).
5. 2((英)) (バルト諸国から輸入される)上質のカシ材.

━━ [他動詞] (wain・scot・ed，wain・scot・ing；((特に英)) -scot・ted，-scot・ting)

1. 1〈部屋・玄関・廊下などの〉壁を板張りする
   • a room wainscoted in oak
   • カシ材の腰板を張った部屋.
2. 2〈壁に〉大理石［タイル，鏡，絵画など］を張る.

cleft stick noun UK
be in a cleft stick to be in a situation where it is very difficult to decide what to do, usually because both of your two choices of action would cause problems:
UN troops are in a cleft stick: something has to be done for the civilian population, yet to retaliate would surely be the spark to ignite all-out war.




'cleft-palate'n
A cleft in the palate between the two palatal processes. It can vary in involvement and can be associated with cleft lip. If both hard and soft palates are involved, it is a uranostaphyloschisis; if only the soft palate is divided, it is a uranoschisis. The term cleft palate is often erroneously applied to clefts between the median nasal and maxillary processes through the alveolus. The proper term for this type of cleft is cleft jaw, or gnathoschisis.

Cleft palate. (Neville/Damm/Allen/Bouquot, 2002)

cleft

━━ v. cleave¹の過去（分詞）.
━━ a., n. 裂けた; 裂け［割れ］目.
in a cleft stick　進退きわまって.
cleft palate　【医】口蓋(がい)裂.