‖ pollex Anat.
(ˈpɒlɛks)
Pl. pollices (-ɪsiːz).
[Lat., = thumb, also great toe.]
1. The innermost digit of the fore limb in air-breathing vertebrates; in man, etc., the thumb. Sometimes used to include the corresponding digit of the hind limb (the great toe), distinctively called hallux.
| 1835–6 Todd's Cycl. Anat. I. 571/2 The pollex in the great whale has two bones. 1854 Owen Skel. & Teeth in Orr's Circ. Sc. I. Org. Nat. 231 The pollex, or the first digit, exceeds the third..in length. 1872 Mivart Elem. Anat. iv. (1873) 174 When a digit is wanting it is generally the pollex, as in spider monkeys. 1897 Parker & Haswell Text-bk. Zool. II. xiii. 77 The first digit of the fore-limb is distinguished as the pollex or thumb. 1909 W. Bateson Mendel's Princ. Heredity xii. 213 The case is more probably to be regarded as a homoeotic variation of the digits into the likeness of the hallux and pollex. 1959 [see alula 1]. 1971 A. Burgess MF xv. 169 She clutched her bag between index and pollex. 1975 Nature 17 Jan. 192/1 Proteles differs from Hyaena principally in having a dentition much reduced in size, and in retaining the pollex (a digit lost in both Hyaena and Crocuta). |
2. Zool. The movable part of the forceps in some crustaceans.
| 1895 F. H. Herrick Amer. Lobster ix. 147 The pollux [sic] is depressed, so that when the claw is closed it falls almost exactly midway between the normal and first superadded digit. 1904 Biol. Bull. VI. 75 The added structure [of an aberrant limb of a crayfish] is..a movable piece with two immobile prongs that otherwise resemble the index and pollex of a forceps. |