prehensile

See also: préhensile

English

WOTD – 25 January 2008

Etymology

Borrowed from French préhensile, from Latin perfect passive participle prehēnsus, from prehendō (“grasp, seize”) + adjective suffix -ile, from Latin -ilis.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /pɹɪˈhɛn.saɪl/
• (US) IPA^(key): /pɹiˈhɛnsəl/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

Adjective

prehensile (not comparable)

1. (zoology) Able to take hold of and clasp objects; adapted for grasping especially by wrapping around an object.

   Some monkeys have prehensile tails which they use to pick things up.

Derived terms

• nonprehensile
• prehensilely
• prehensility
• subprehensile

 

Related terms

• prehensive

Translations

able to take hold of objects

• Bulgarian: хватателен (hvatatelen)
• Catalan: prènsil
• Dutch: grijp-
• Finnish: tarttuma-
• French: préhensile (fr), préhensif (fr) m
• Galician: prénsil (gl)
• German: Greif- (prefix in compound nouns)
• Hungarian: kapaszkodó (hu)
• Icelandic: grip-
• Indonesian: melilit (id)
• Irish: greama, inghreama
• Italian: prensile (it)
• Macedonian: префатен (prefaten)
• Manx: yn-ghreimmee
• Occitan: prensil
• Polish: chwytny (pl) m
• Portuguese: preênsil (pt)
• Russian: це́пкий (ru) (cépkij)
• Serbo-Croatian: prehensilni m
• Spanish: prensil (es)