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/, /pɹiːˈhɛn.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), хвата́тельный (ru) (xvatátelʹnyj) Serbo-Croatian: prehensilni m Spanish: prensil (es), prensor