Word of the Day Archive
Wednesday February 20, 2013
tensile \TEN-suhl\
, adjective:
1. capable of being stretched or drawn out; ductile.
2. of or pertaining to tension: tensile strain.
Claire's tensile features pull themselves tight with glee.
-- Zadie Smith, On Beauty
One way of increasing the tensile strength in a wooden bow at any time of the year was to apply a sinew backing.
-- Louis Bird, Jennifer S. H. Brown, Anne Lindsay, Telling Our Stories
This late Renaissance word tensile was derived in 1626 from the Latin verb tendere meaning "to stretch."
Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for tensile
