palp

• (verb): From French palper.
• (noun): From New Latin palpus (“a feeler”).
• Both ultimately from Latin palpō (“to stroke, touch softly, feel”).

• IPA^(key): /pælp/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ælp

palp (plural palps or palpi)

1. (zoology) Synonym of pedipalp.
   • 2015, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Children of Time, Pan Books (2016), page 20:

     Below her formidable eyes her fangs are flanked by limb-like mouthparts: her palps, coloured a startling white like a quivering moustache.

palp (countable and uncountable, plural palps)

1. A fleshy part of a fingertip.

   Synonym: pulp

   • 1922 February, James Joyce, Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company, […], →OCLC:

     He folded his razor neatly and with stroking palps of fingers felt the smooth skin.

   • 1964, K. B. Gilden, Hurry Sundown:

     The palps of her fingers itched, thickened, erected with the need to touch the bent head. Plunge into the dust-moted rough blackness of his hair, smooth back downward over the deep-brown nape of his neck.

   • 1984, W. Boyd, Stars & Bars, i.i.11:

     With the palp of a forefinger he squeezed moisture from his wiry blond eyebrows.

   • 1998, Renny Christopher, Linda Strom, Lisa Orr, Working Class Studies: 1 & 2, Feminist Press at CUNY, →ISBN, page 165:

     When Mariuchi caresses the plant, for example, sensuously emitting from the palps of her fingers, a siren song.

   • 2008, John Gardner, Mickelsson's Ghosts, New Directions Publishing, →ISBN, page 130:

     He tested the blade against the palp of his thumb, then returned to the living room and decisively, scrape by scrape, cut away the hex sign, leaving a halo of ragged wood.

   • 2012, Sean Stewart, Star Wars: Dark Rendezvous, Random House, →ISBN:

     The bag seethed in her hand, not unpleasantly, as computational monofilaments shifted and flowed under her touch until they cradled the palps of her fingers.

2. (medicine, uncountable, colloquial) Short for palpation.

   pain on palp

palp (third-person singular simple present palps, present participle palping, simple past and past participle palped)

1. To feel, to explore by touch.
   • 1982, Lawrence Durrell, Constance (Avignon Quintet), Faber & Faber, published 2004, page 729:

     It is not possible to examine a male patient without making him undress and actually palping him all over.

palp (not comparable)

1. (medicine, colloquial) Palpatory; obtained by palpation.

   palp blood pressure

• palpability
• palpable
• palpate
• palpation
• palpiform
• palpitate
• palpitation

• “palp”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• “palp”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.
• “palp”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.

• Appl., Lapp, appl., plap

palp m (plural palpi)

1. Alternative form of palpă