tendril

Etymology

Its origin is uncertain.^[2] It is probably borrowed from Middle French tendrillon (“bud, shoot, cartilage”),^[3][4][5][6] or altered after that word,^[7][8] a diminutive of tendron (“young shoot; cartilage”),^[5][7][9] from Old French tendre (“soft, tender”),^[3][5][6] from Latin tener (“tender”),^[7][8][9] and the Shorter Oxford compares Italian tenerume (“shoots”).^[8] The OED instead connects it with Latin tendō (“to stretch”) and French tendre (“to stretch”), saying that the word in its actual form and sense exists only in English.^[2] It notes that Paré took tendron to mean a clasper of the vine, and that R. Estienne (1536) glossed capreolus by Middle French tendon, so that 16th-century French confused it with tendron.^[2] Weekley likewise prefers the verb, since a tendril reaches and clutches.^[10] Merriam-Webster Unabridged and Collins start from Middle French tendron "tendril" as an alteration of tendon, from Medieval Latin tendō, influenced by tendron "bud, cartilage",^[11][12] and Dictionary.com takes it as a variant, perhaps by dissimilation, of Middle English tendren, also tendron.^[13]

Earliest recorded meaning

A slender organ by which a climbing plant holds on: 1538, in Elyot's Dictionary,^[2][3][11] which renders Latin capreolus as "the tendrell of a vyne".^[10] Etymonline dates it to the 1530s.^[4]

Semantic evolution

The word was a botanical term from the start.^[2][4] Cotgrave glossed the French plural tendrillons as "tendrells".^[14] From 1615, in Crooke's anatomy, it was transferred to things that look like one, such as a slender branch of a vein or a curl of hair.^[2][4] Between 1603, in Florio's Montaigne, and 1639 it also rendered French tendron in the sense of a young girl.^[2] Johnson (1755) defined it as "the clasp of a vine, or other climbing plant", with Milton's "As the vine curls her tendrils".^[15] The figurative use for a clinging affection or attachment dates from 1841, in Emerson.^[2][4] A rare verb, to curl like a tendril, follows in 1894.^[2][8]

Timeline

• 1538 – the clinging organ of a climbing plant.^[2][3][11]
• 1603 – a young girl, rendering French tendron (obsolete by 1639).^[2]
• 1615 – something resembling it, such as a slender branch of a vein or a ringlet of hair.^[2][4]
• 1841 – figuratively, a clinging affection or attachment.^[2][4]
• 1894 – verb, to curl like a tendril.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. A slender, often spiral part of a climbing plant, a modified leaf or stem, that winds around a support: The pea's tendrils gripped the wire.^[12][11][2]
2. Something resembling this, such as a wisp of hair or a thin curl: tendrils of smoke.^[12][11][2]
3. Something immaterial that clings or spreads like a tendril, especially an attachment or affection.^[2][8]

Verb

1. (rare) To curl or spread like a tendril.^[2][8]

Word family

• tendrilous
• tendrillar
• tendrilly

Related words

• tender
• tendon
• tendron

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
5. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
6. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
7. ^ a b c Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ a b c d e f Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ a b Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
11. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
12. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
13. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
14. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
15. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.