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, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

Of uncertain origin.

Traditionally connected to Proto-Slavic *palьcь (“thumb”), with contamination from Latin polleō (“to be strong”) (hence pollex, not *pōlex). However, de Vaan is unconvinced, and instead prefers Meier-Brügger's derivation from a Proto-Italic *por-likʰ-s (“which is licked over”), from Proto-Indo-European *per- (“through”) + *leyǵʰ- (“to lick”), with the second syllable in the nominative singular becoming -lex based on the model of other body parts, such as vortex (“whirl; top of the head”) inflecting with -ex.[1]

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /ˈpol.leks/, [ˈpɔlːʲɛks̠]
• (modern Italianate 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
• *pollicāta

• “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 and Roman Biography and Mythology, London: John Murray
• Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1911) “pŏllen”, in Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch (in German), page 497