tendril

• This was a mere tendril, an operation at the periphery of mech interest.
• The thread that Chrysler LLC is hanging by is on its last tendril, and the loans that the company received may only allow it to get out from under the debts owed to key suppliers. —  Saab Cars - Trollhattan Saab
• Indeed, noble as is this plant in every part, I think this tendril is the crowning grace of the whole: it is exceedingly slender, throwing off side-branches, which, again, repeatedly fork off at acute angles in pairs, and each extremity of each branch is furnished with a minute and delicate hook, so small as to be scarcely perceptible, but so strong and sharp-pointed as to lay hold of every object in its way--which hold it retains, when once well fixed, in spite of wind or weather. —  Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852
• Presently he fished up a bundle of leaves bound with a vine-tendril, which he laid carefully aside. —  The Cruise of the Cachalot Round the World After Sperm Whales
• It will then be seen that the tendril, after forming a spiral one way, lengthens out like a tiny green wax taper, and afterwards turns the other. —  Nature Near London

Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

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