forceps

Learned borrowing from Latin forceps.

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈfɔːsɛps/, /ˈfɔːsəps/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈfoɹsɛps/
• (without the horse–hoarse merger, rhotic) IPA^(key): /ˈfɔ(ː)ɹsɛps/

forceps (plural forceps or forcipes or forcepses)

1. An instrument used in surgery or medical procedures for grasping and holding objects, similar to tongs or pincers.
2. (entomology) A pair of appendages on the abdomen of some insects, such as earwigs, resembling the medical instrument.

Although the Latin word is singular, this word is often treated as a plurale tantum by analogy with names for similar items such as tongs and tweezers: this forceps or these forceps (or even pair of forceps).

• pair of forceps

• serrefine

• forceps on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Learned borrowing from Latin forceps.

• IPA^(key): /fɔʁ.sɛps/

forceps m (plural forceps)

1. (medicine) forceps

• “forceps”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

From Proto-Italic *formokaps through syncope. By surface analysis, formus (“warm”) +‎ -ceps (“taker”).

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [ˈfɔr.kɛps]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [ˈfɔr.t͡ʃeps]

forceps m (genitive forcipis); third declension

1. (pair of) tongs, pincers, forceps

Third-declension noun.

• forcipātus

• “forceps”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “forceps”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• "forceps", 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)
• forceps in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
• “forceps”, in Harry Thurston Peck, editor (1898), Harper’s Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, New York: Harper & Brothers
• “forceps”, in William Smith et al., editor (1890), A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, London: William Wayte. G. E. Marindin
• De Vaan, Michiel (2008) Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages (Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series; 7), Leiden, Boston: Brill, →ISBN, page 108

Borrowed from French forceps.

forceps n (plural forcepsuri)

1. forceps