Definition of "prehensile" [pre•hen•sile]

• Adapted for seizing, grasping, or holding, especially by wrapping around an object: a monkey's prehensile tail. (adjective)
• Having keen intellect; insightful. (adjective)
• Greedy; grasping. (adjective)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Funny, I read your misspelling as "prehensile", and ignored the absurdity of such an adjective."
• ""There are some kinds, too, that have what is called prehensile tails; that is, tails by which they can hang themselves to the limb of a tree, and which they use with nearly as much ease as they can their hands."
• "The trust they worried most about was “the Money Trust.” Captained by J.P. Morgan, “the financial Gorgon,” the Money Trust was skewered in court and in print by future Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis, subjected to withering Congressional investigations, excoriated in the exposés of “muckraking” journalists, and depicted by cartoonists as a cabal of prehensile Visigoths in death-heads."