Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A twisting, slender structure by which a plant, such as a grape or cucumber, twines around and often climbs an object or another plant.
- noun Something, such as a ringlet of hair, that is long, slender, and curling.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun In botany, a filiform leafless plant-organ that attaches itself to another body for the purpose of support.
- Climbing as a tendril, or as by a tendril.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Bot.) A slender, leafless portion of a plant by which it becomes attached to a supporting body, after which the tendril usually contracts by coiling spirally.
- adjective rare Clasping; climbing as a tendril.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun botany A thin,
spirally coiling stem that attaches aplant to itssupport . - noun zoology A
hair -liketentacle .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun slender stem-like structure by which some twining plants attach themselves to an object for support
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
Support
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Examples
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The colony spread out a thin tendril and consumed each.
365 tomorrows » 2009 » May : A New Free Flash Fiction SciFi Story Every Day 2009
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You wake to find a wet snow has sneaked in after midnight wrapping the branches with an airy gauze, spangled with diamonds so that every snarly twig and tendril is an epiphany of white etched against the purplish-blue of an undecided sky.
alice d’alessio | three poems « poetry dispatch & other notes from the underground 2008
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You wake to find a wet snow has sneaked in after midnight wrapping the branches with an airy gauze, spangled with diamonds so that every snarly twig and tendril is an epiphany of white etched against the purplish-blue of an undecided sky.
January « 2008 « poetry dispatch & other notes from the underground 2008
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I begin to think that one of the commonest means of transition is the same individual plant having the same part in different states: thus Corydalis claviculata, if you look to one leaf, may be called a tendril-bearer; if you look to another leaf it may be called a leaf-climber.
More Letters of Charles Darwin — Volume 1 Charles Darwin 1845
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You correctly point out that the Black Walnut has compound leaves but then incorrectly identify the leaflets as leaves, and call a tendril what is actually the rachis of the leaf.
eric peters 2009
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Violet noticed a tendril of black hair peeking out of the comforter, and one white hand.
Etched in Bone Adrian Phoenix 2011
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Violet noticed a tendril of black hair peeking out of the comforter, and one white hand.
Etched in Bone Adrian Phoenix 2011
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It is my Sacred Heart … It is (metaphorically) wearing my heart on my sleeve … It is a tendril unfurling … It is a knot untied … It is a release …
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The companions wandered beneath the staring eye of the sun, following Big Zojja, as Little Zojja used her cockpit cage to pick up a telltale tendril of magic.
GuildWars Edge of Destiny J. Robert King 2011
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But then a tendril of irritation reached him, a fragment of emotion carried into his mind by an empathic projection—a strong empathic projection.
Star Trek: Typhon Pact: Rough Beasts of Empire David R. George III 2011
bilby commented on the word tendril
"Undue aestheticism in representing sexual behaviour can also have harmful effects. The inauthenticity of sexual fantasy as it is stimulated by commercial representations of the woman as sex object leaves many immature men unable to cope with the eventual discovery that women do not feel smooth and velvety all over, that their pubic hair exists and is not swans'-down or vine tendrils, that a woman in heat does not smell like a bed of roses."
- 'Seduction is a four-letter word', Germaine Greer in Playboy, 1973.
April 14, 2008