Word.ws English Dictionary

tentacles

tentacles is the plural of tentacle.

tentacles is the third-person singular simple present indicative of tentacle.

Meaning of tentacle

Noun

tentacle (plural tentacles)

  1. An elongated, boneless, flexible organ or limb of some animals, such as the octopus and squid.
    • With one blow of the axe, Captain Nemo cut this formidable tentacle, that slid wriggling down the ladder.1873, Jules Verne, “The “Devil Fish.”—Terrible Encounter.—Crushed to Death in the Arms of a Monster.—Ned Land saved by the Captain.—“Only Revenge”.”, in [anonymous], transl., Twenty Thousand Leagues...
  2. One of the glandular hairs on the leaves of certain insectivorous plants.
  3. (figuratively) An insidious reach or influence.
    • the tentacles of the criminal underworld
  4. (figuratively) Something like a zoological limb.
  5. (UK, historical) An officer employed to drive out to troops and transmit back requests for support via a special radio link.
    • A joint RAF/Army staffed Air Support Control (ASC) headquarters was established at each army corps and each armoured division, linked to the forward brigades by a 'tentacle' equipped with two-way wireless telegraphy.2013, Dr Ian Gooderson, Air Power at the Battlefront, page 26

See all 6 meanings of tentacle

Questions about tentacles

What is tentacles the plural of?
Tentacles is the plural of tentacle.

Words near tentacles in the dictionary

  1. tentacled
  2. tentacled snake
  3. tentacled snakes
  4. tentacleless
  5. tentaclelike
  6. tentacles
  7. tentacling
  8. tentacula
  9. tentacular
  10. tentaculate
  11. tentaculated

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tentacles (page history and authors); tentacle (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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