[ad. mod.L. TENTACULUM.] Zool. A slender flexible process in animals, esp. invertebrates, serving as an organ of touch or feeling; = FEELER 3, PALP.
1762. Du Pont, in Phil. Trans., LIII. 58. The fingers, or tentacles, end in a deep blue.
1835. Kirby, Hab. & Inst. Anim., I. v. 181. An infinity of cells … from which the tentacles issue to collect their food.
1857. Wood, Com. Obj. Seashore, v. 53. On the arms, legs, feet, or tentacles of the cuttles, are arranged rows of suckers.
1866. Tate, Brit. Mollusks, iii. 47. The head [of a snail or slug] bears two long slender tentacles or horns.
1868. Owen, Vertebr. Anim., I. v. 411. Tentacles depend from the rostral prolongation of the Sturgeon, and from the mandibular symphysis of the Cod.
b. Bot. Applied to a sensitive filament, as the viscous gland-tipped leaf-hairs of the Sundew.
1875. Darwin, Insectiv. Pl., i. 5. A tentacle consists of a thin, straight, hair-like pedicel carrying a gland on the summit.
1879. Lubbock, Sci. Lect., i. 4. In our Common Sundew … the rounded leaves are covered with glutinous glandular hairs or tentacles.
c. fig. = FEELER 2 b.
1847. De Quincey, Secret Societies, Wks. VI. 235. This plot … stretched its horrid fangs, and threw out its forerunning feelers and tentacles, into many nations.
1883. H. Drummond, Nat. Law in Spir. W., viii. (ed. 2), 300. The soul…, waving its tentacles piteously in the empty air, feeling after God if so be that it may find Him.
1895. Mahaffy, Empire Ptolemies, x. Prepared to fall easily into the tentacles of the all-devouring Republic [Rome].
1901. Scotsman, 7 March, 7/5. One of De Wet’s tentacles had been stretched out to obscure the approach of Nesbitt’s horse.
1923. A. J. Beveridge, in Proc. Sons of the Revolution, 109. With the multiplication of these tentacles of government up goes the cost of government, up go taxes and down goes liberty.
d. attrib. and Comb., as tentacle-like adj.; tentacle-sheath, the sheath-like structure surrounding the base of the tentacles of many mollusks.
1835–6. Todd’s Cycl. Anat., I. 683/2. Their tentacle-like arms [i.e., of Cirripeds] resemble the antennae of lobsters.
Hence Tentacled a., furnished with or having tentacles.
1857. Gosse, Omphalos, 119. Every individual cell,… inhabited by its tentacled Hydra, has … budded out from a branch.
