Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Able to seize, grasp, or hold, especially by wrapping around an object.
- adjective Having a keen intellect or powerful memory.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Seizing or grasping; taking and holding; adapted for prehension; especially, fitted for grasping or holding by folding, wrapping, or curving around the object prehended: as, the prehensile tail of a monkey or an opossum. Also
prehensory . See cut above, and cuts at Cebinæ, marmose, musk-cavy, opossum, and spider-monkey.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Adapted to seize or grasp; seizing; grasping.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective zoology Able to take hold of and
clasp objects; adapted forgrasping especially by wrapping around an object.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective adapted for grasping especially by wrapping around an object
- adjective having a keen intellect
- adjective immoderately desirous of acquiring e.g. wealth
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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Funny, I read your misspelling as "prehensile", and ignored the absurdity of such an adjective.
Latest Articles Palm Beach Post 2010
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Funny, I read your misspelling as "prehensile", and ignored the absurdity of such an adjective.
Latest Articles Palm Beach Post 2010
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"There are some kinds, too, that have what is called prehensile tails; that is, tails by which they can hang themselves to the limb of a tree, and which they use with nearly as much ease as they can their hands.
Minnie's Pet Monkey Madeline Leslie 1854
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He was hanging upside down from a prehensile tail on a high branch of the oak tree, hands folded across his tweed jacket.
Egg Hunt Thomas Pluck 2011
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There were many times when a hideous day (or month, or year) at the job felt a little better when I could look myself in the eye (using a mirror, as opposed to a prehensile eyestalk) and tell myself that at least I made my word quota.
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The trust they worried most about was “the Money Trust.” Captained by J.P. Morgan, “the financial Gorgon,” the Money Trust was skewered in court and in print by future Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis, subjected to withering Congressional investigations, excoriated in the exposés of “muckraking” journalists, and depicted by cartoonists as a cabal of prehensile Visigoths in death-heads.
Steve Fraser: The All-American Occupation Steve Fraser 2011
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The trust they worried most about was “the Money Trust.” Captained by J.P. Morgan, “the financial Gorgon,” the Money Trust was skewered in court and in print by future Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis, subjected to withering Congressional investigations, excoriated in the exposés of “muckraking” journalists, and depicted by cartoonists as a cabal of prehensile Visigoths in death-heads.
Steve Fraser: The All-American Occupation Steve Fraser 2011
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When asked about proof of God's views of homosexuality in male seahorses, Biblical scholar Marshall Drummond quoted the passage: "And if a male seahorse lie with a male seahorse, as with female seahorses, both of them have committed marine abomination; their blood shall be upon their bony plates and prehensile tails."
Spencer Green: Michele Bachmann Counseling Clinic Encouraged Male Seahorses to Go Straight Spencer Green 2011
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On the fatal morning, as Frank Moon's score gathers force, we discover Samsa in bed on his back, his long fingers and prehensile toes waving helplessly above him, like the multiple feet of an insect.
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The species operates in mass numbers, using humans as hosts to new soldiers, with razor sharp claws, a retractable second-mouth and a prehensile tail like a lance.
TEN of TERROR: Top 10 Movie Monsters « Giant Killer Squid - Film, Comics, News, Reviews and more 2009
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