toenail

UK/ˈtəʊˌneɪl/US/ˈtəʊˌneɪl/

nounB2Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #8,857 of 15,258leans spoken

Other forms: toenails

A toenail is the hard plate on the end of a toe. Cut your toenails, an ingrown toenail, a broken toenail.

Cutting it straight across rather than curved is what prevents an ingrown one, which is the single most useful piece of foot advice there is. Toenails grow about half as fast as fingernails, so a damaged one takes a year to replace.

Definitions of toenail

1nountoenailThe hard plate on the end of a toe.B2
“He dropped a brick on his big toe and lost the toenail.”

toenail is a nail.

Where it comes from

Toe plus nail, both Old English words. Nail names the plate and the metal spike alike, from the same root.

From toe + nail.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Body & Health

Practise this word

toenail in the wild

Gryphaea (commonly known as devil's toenails) is a genus of marine gryphaeid oysters known from the Mesozoic Era.
Gryphaea
While any nail can become ingrown, wearing shoes causes the toenails to grow in more often.
Ingrown nail
A true ingrown toenail is caused by actual penetration of flesh by a sliver of toenail.
Ingrown nail
The lunula (pl.: lunulae; from Latin 'little moon') is the crescent-shaped whitish area of the bed of a fingernail or toenail.
Lunula (anatomy)
Beau's lines are deep grooved lines that run from side to side on the fingernail or the toenail.
Beau's lines

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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