Other forms: tentacles
A tentacle is a long flexible arm used to grip or to sting. Octopus tentacles, a stinging tentacle, wrapped in tentacles.
An octopus has eight arms and a squid has eight arms and two longer tentacles, which is a distinction biologists keep. Jellyfish tentacles sting by firing tiny harpoons that work even after the animal is dead. Figuratively, tentacles are a reach that spreads everywhere. Note that the Latin means to feel.
1nountentacleA long flexible arm used to grip or to sting.
“The octopus wrapped a tentacle around the diver's arm.”
tentacle is a limb.
New Latin tentaculum comes from tentare, to feel or try. Tentative comes from the same feeling.
New Latin
tentāculum
English, today
tentacle
From New Latin tentāculum, from tentō. a doublet of tentaculum.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA