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Discuss Email this Feedback RSS/XML Permalink A.Word.A.Day--prehensile This week's theme: coined words. prehensile (pri-HEN-sil, -syl) adjective 1. Capable of seizing or grasping, especially by wrapping around. 2. Skilled at keen perception or mental grasp of an idea or concept. 3. Greedy. [From French prehensile, coined by French naturalist Georges Louis Leclerc De Buffon, from Latin prehensus.] Today's word in Visual Thesaurus. -Anu Garg (garg AT wordsmith.org) "The drugstore toothbrush rack has become a circus of ergonomic grips, flexing heads, and prehensile gum-probes -- an entire retail sector transformed by design." Philip Nobel; Can Design in America Avoid the Style Trap?; The New York Times; Nov 26, 2000. X-Bonus To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men. -Ella Wheeler Wilcox, poet (1850-1919)

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