Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun Either of the first pair of fanglike appendages near the mouth of an arachnid or a horseshoe crab, often modified for grasping and piercing.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun One of the anterior pair of appendages of a scorpion; a short, three-jointed organ ending in a prehensile claw. See cut under
scorpion . - noun The corresponding organ in a spider, which terminates in a sharp joint folding down on the preceding one like the blade of a pocket-knife on the handle, and having at its extremity the opening of a poison-gland.
- noun Also in English form chelicere.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Zoöl.) One of the anterior pair of mouth organs, terminated by a pincherlike claw, in scorpions and allied Arachnida. They are homologous with the falcers of spiders, and probably with the mandibles of insects.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun zoology One of the prehensile
claws found on the proboscises ofchelicerates (spiders andscorpions ).
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun either of the first pair of fang-like appendages near the mouth of an arachnid; often modified for grasping and piercing
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
[New Latin : chela + Greek keras, horn; see ker- in Indo-European roots.]
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
New Latin, from Ancient Greek χηλή (khēlē, "jawbone") + κέρας (keras, "horn")
Support
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Examples
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From "feeling" for the abdominal bulge try THAT one with a King Baboon or Usambara Red! to comparing the sizes of the chelicera, march madness legs, abdominal girth or the you-name-it.
Everything I know about sex I learned from my tarantula Douglas Hoffman 2005
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