Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Having five digits on each extremity.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Having five digits, as fingers or toes; quinquedigitate. Also
pentadactylous . - noun A pentadactyl or quinquedigitate animal: any member of the Pentadactyla.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective (Anat.) Having five digits to the hand or foot.
- adjective Having five appendages resembling fingers or toes.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective anatomy Having five
digits on a limb.
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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The fliers, the herbivores and the predators are pentadactyl which isn't an unlikely evolution, but two digits on a side flange?
Dinosaur Planet McCaffrey, Anne 1978
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The fliers, the herbivores and the predators are pentadactyl which isn't an unlikely evolution, but two digits on a side flange? "
Cattle Town 2010
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But if, Varian thought, there had been the survey, maybe such things as pentadactyl development and aquatic collapsing parallelograms were entirely possible!
Cattle Town 2010
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And if the golden fliers, who were pentadactyl, were not indigenous, then the herbivores and predators they'd so far encountered were not indigenous either!
Cattle Town 2010
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Why, then, do all land vertebrates have pentadactyl limbs, for example?
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We have established -- thanks to Leon Dane's work with injured Catteni --- that there are more points of similarity than differences between our two species since both are bipedal, pentadactyl, and share many of the same external features, like eyes, ears, noses.
Freedoms Challenge McCaffrey, Anne 1998
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But if, Varian thought, there had been the survey, maybe such things as pentadactyl development and aquatic collapsing parallelograms were entirely possible!
Dinosaur Planet McCaffrey, Anne 1978
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Those herbivores we've been shadowing are not only vertebrates and bleed red blood, but now that I've got close enough to have a good look, the things are pentadactyl, too.
Dinosaur Planet McCaffrey, Anne 1978
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And if the golden fliers, who were pentadactyl, were not indigenous, then the herbivores and predators they'd so far encountered were not indigenous either!
Dinosaur Planet McCaffrey, Anne 1978
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In the pentadactyl plantigrade foot of the early mammals, the first digit, being the shortest, was the first to leave the ground, to dwindle, and finally to disappear.
Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) An Exposition of the Darwinian Theory and a Discussion of Post-Darwinian Questions George John Romanes 1871
Telofy commented on the word pentadactyl
"A flier like a great locust thrummed overhead; I watched it until it was out of sight, feeling the ghost of the strange wind blown from the pentadactyls that had attacked our cavalry at Orithyia." -- Gene Wolfe, The Urth of the New Sun
October 1, 2008