noun
splice
SPLYS
noun
1
A join made by weaving or overlapping two ends of rope, cable, or similar material.
"The sailor made a neat splice at the end of the line."
verb
1
To join two lengths of rope, film, wire, or similar material together.
"They spliced the two cables together to extend the cord."
"The editor spliced the scenes together in the final cut."
2
In genetics, to remove non-coding sections from RNA and join the remaining pieces together.
"The cell's machinery splices the pre-mRNA before it leaves the nucleus."
How to Use Splice
Learner’s notesIn plain EnglishTo join two ends of something (rope, film, genetic material) together, or the resulting join.
Common pairings
splice together
splice a rope
gene splicing
Word Forms
spliced past tense, splices plural, splices singular
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Etymology
Borrowed around 1525 from Middle Dutch splissen, related to splitten, "to split" — oddly, the word shifted in meaning from "fraying apart" to "joining together" during the rope-making process.