amplexus

Latin amplexus (“embrace”)

• Rhymes: -ɛksəs

amplexus (uncountable)

1. A form of pseudocopulation, found chiefly in amphibians and horseshoe crabs, in which a male grasps a female with his front legs as part of the mating process.
   • 2014, Elizabeth Kolbert, chapter 1, in The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, Henry Holt and Company:

     Finally, we came upon a pair of Panamanian robber frogs locked in amplexus—the amphibian version of sex.

   • 2018 March 29, Ed Douglas, “Country diary: tantric embraces and nuptial pads – the secrets of frog sex revealed”, in The Guardian‎:

     In the middle, just below the surface, a male and a female were locked in amplexus, a coupling that can last for days as the male waits to fertilise the eggs when they are laid.

• amplexus reservatus

• amplex

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /amˈplek.sus/, [ämˈpɫ̪ɛks̠ʊs̠]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /amˈplek.sus/, [ämˈplɛksus]

Perfect active participle of amplector (“surround; grasp”).

amplexus (feminine amplexa, neuter amplexum); first/second-declension participle

1. surrounded, encircled, entwined
2. embraced, clasped, grasped
3. esteemed
4. cherished

First/second-declension adjective.

amplector +‎ -tus

amplexus m (genitive amplexūs); fourth declension

1. clasp, embrace
2. a loving embrace, caress (mostly in the plural)
   • 8 CE, Ovid, Fasti 6.553–554:

     ūna ministrārum solita est, Cadmēī, tuārum
     saepe sub amplexūs coniugis īre tuī.

     It had been the habit of one of your serving-women, [daughter] of Cadmus, often to go under the embraces of your husband.
     (The daughter of Cadmus is Ino (mythology).)

3. coil
4. circumference

Fourth-declension noun.

• English: amplexus

• “amplexus”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “amplexus”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• amplexus in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.