Pliers are the pinching hand tool for gripping, bending and pulling wire. A pair of pliers, needle-nose pliers, grab the pliers.
The word is plural and takes a pair of, like scissors and tongs, and there is no singular. The jaws multiply grip through leverage, and the pivot point decides how much. Needle-nose pliers reach into small spaces, and combination pliers include a wire cutter. Note that pliers grip where a spanner turns, which is why using pliers on a nut ruins it.
1nounpliersA pinching hand tool for gripping and bending.
“He used pliers to pull the bent nail out of the wood.”
pliers is a hand tool.
Proto-Indo-European
*pleḱ- — to fold, plait, weave
Middle French
pli
Anglo-Norman
pli
Middle English
pleit
English
ply
English, today
pliers
Built from
From ply + -er + -s. ply comes from Middle English pleit, plit, plite (“a fold, pleat, wrinkle; braid, strand in a braided cord, ply”), from Anglo-Norman pli, plei, pleit, and Middle French pli, ploy, ply (“a fold, pleat; joint in armour; situation, state”) (modern French pli (“a fold, pleat”)), from plier, ployer (“to bend, fold”), from Latin plicō (“to bend, fold, roll up”), from Proto-Indo-European pleḱ- (“to fold, plait, weave”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA