TENDRIL

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does tendril mean? 

• TENDRIL (noun)
  The noun TENDRIL has 1 sense:

1. slender stem-like structure by which some twining plants attach themselves to an object for support

  Familiarity information: TENDRIL used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• TENDRIL (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Slender stem-like structure by which some twining plants attach themselves to an object for support

Classified under:

Nouns denoting plants

Hypernyms ("tendril" is a kind of...):

plant part; plant structure (any part of a plant or fungus)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "tendril"):

cirrhus; cirrus (usually coiled)

 Context examples 

The tendrils are composed of particles with diameters no smaller than about a hundred thousandth of an inch, a size consistent with the measurements of E-ring particles.

(Icy Tendrils Reaching into Saturn Ring Traced to Their Source, NASA)

Patches of dust block out the light as it travels towards us, preventing us from seeing the stars behind it, and smaller tendrils of dust create the dark filamentary structures within the clouds.

(Stellar Nursery Blooms into View, ESO)

Leaves may appear as part of the foliage, or as a cotyledon, a scale, a bract, a spine, or a tendril.

(Leaf, Food and Drug Administration)

The light drew them as if they were plants; the chemistry of the life that composed them demanded the light as a necessity of being; and their little puppet-bodies crawled blindly and chemically, like the tendrils of a vine.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

A red chaperon or cap, with long hanging cornette, sat daintily on the back of his black-curled head, while his gold-hued shoes were twisted up a la poulaine, as though the toes were shooting forth a tendril which might hope in time to entwine itself around his massive leg.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The tendrils reach into Saturn's E ring — the ring in which Enceladus orbits — extending tens of thousands of miles (or kilometers) away from the moon.

(Icy Tendrils Reaching into Saturn Ring Traced to Their Source, NASA)

Under certain lighting conditions, Cassini's wide-view images showing icy material erupting from Enceladus reveal faint, finger-like features, dubbed "tendrils" by the imaging team.

(Icy Tendrils Reaching into Saturn Ring Traced to Their Source, NASA)

Each unique tendril structure can be reproduced by particular sets of geysers on the moon's surface.

(Icy Tendrils Reaching into Saturn Ring Traced to Their Source, NASA)