Tenaculum
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A medical instrument consisting of a sharp hook attached to a handle; used mainly for taking up arteries and the like.
"It was a recognized procedure in those days (and is resorted to still), when all medical, electrical, and other remedial measures had failed to relieve a furious neuralgia, for the surgeon to cut down upon the nerve-trunk, free it from its surrounding attachments, and, slipping his tenaculum or finger under it, stretch the nerve with a considerable degree of force."
- 2 A hapteron or holdfast.
Example
More examples"It was a recognized procedure in those days (and is resorted to still), when all medical, electrical, and other remedial measures had failed to relieve a furious neuralgia, for the surgeon to cut down upon the nerve-trunk, free it from its surrounding attachments, and, slipping his tenaculum or finger under it, stretch the nerve with a considerable degree of force."
Etymology
From Latin tenaculum.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.