pollex

plural pollices · plural rare pollexes

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.

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

   1955 September 15, Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita, Paris: The Olympia Press […], →OCLC, page 161

   3 more examples

   The Simiidae have a man-like appearance. They possess neither tails nor bestial cheek pouches. Their arms are longer than their legs, and they have opposable pollexes and a broad sternum.

   1949 April, Harry Holbert Turney-High, “Distinguishing Characteristics of the Primates”, in General Anthropology, New York, N.Y.: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, part 1 (Basic Concepts and Data), section 2 (The Organic Man), page 28

   Then there are the amateur carpenters. Poor, misguided devils. They bring purple thumbs back to work. Purple pollexes because they smashed the daylights out of their digits trying to drive four penny finishing nails into flimsy bits of moulding.

   1977 June 26, Chris Peck, “Purple thumbs tell of tool machines”, in Times-News, 72nd year, number 252, Twin Falls, Ida., page 5, column 1

   Among the crabs with abnormal legs, one leg had two pollexes and three dactyls (Fig. 4B), one had a Y-shaped dactyl (Fig. 4C), two had clawlike dactyls (Fig. 4D), and the rest of the abnormal legs had a curved structure.

   1996 June, Hsiao-Wei Kao, Ernest S. Chang, “Homeotic Transformation of Crab Walking Leg into Claw by Autotransplantation of Claw Tissue”, in Michael J. Greenberg, editor, The Biological Bulletin, volume 190, number 3, Woods Hole, Mass.: Marine Biological Laboratory, →ISSN, page 317, column 2