pollex

Borrowed from Latin pollex.

pollex (plural pollices)

1. The thumb; the first, or preaxial, digit of the forelimb, corresponding to the hallux in the hind limb. In birds, the pollex is the joint which bears the alula or bastard wing.
   • 1955, Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita:

     We came to know the curious roadside species, Hitchhiking Man, Homo pollex of science, with all its many sub-species and forms.

• pollical
• pollicate

• hallux

• pollex in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913

Perhaps cognate with Proto-Slavic *palьcь, but contaminated with Latin polleō (hence pollex, not *pōlex).

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /ˈpol.leks/, [ˈpɔlːʲɛks̠]
• (Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /ˈpol.leks/, [ˈpɔlːeks]

pollex m (genitive pollicis); third declension

1. thumb
2. great toe
3. a unit of distance, equivalent to approximately 24.6 mm; one uncia (see also: Ancient Roman units of measurement)
4. seal (insignia)

Third-declension noun.

• pollicāris

• “pollex”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “pollex”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• pollex in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)
• “pollex”, in William Smith, editor (1848) A Dictionary of Greek Biography and Mythology, London: John Murray
• Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1911), “pŏllen”, in Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch (in German), page 497