tenaille

See also: tenaillé

English

Etymology

From French tenaille (“a pair of pincers or tongs”), from Latin tenaculum. See tenaculum.

Noun

tenaille (plural tenailles)

1. (military, historical) An outwork in the main ditch of a fortification, in front of the curtain, between two bastions.

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “tenaille”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)

French

Etymology

From Vulgar Latin tenacula, taken as a feminine singular of Latin tenaculum, from teneō. Compare Occitan and Portuguese tenalha.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /tə.naj/

• Audio:

  (file)

• Homophones: tenaillent, tenailles, Thenaille, Thenailles

Noun

tenaille f (plural tenailles)

1. pincer (tool)

Verb

tenaille

1. inflection of tenailler:
   1. first/third-person singular present indicative/subjunctive
   2. second-person singular imperative

Further reading

• “tenaille”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

Anagrams

• entaille, entaillé