(v. i.) To adhere closely; to stick; to hold fast, especially by twining round or embracing; as, the tendril of a vine clings to its support; -- usually followed by to or together.
(v. t.) To cause to adhere to, especially by twining round or embracing.
(v. t.) To make to dry up or wither.
(n.) Adherence; attachment; devotion.
Example Sentences:
(1) The first stop in this arid place of poor farms and orchards clinging to the dry soil is Rafah, cut off by the border from its Palestinian counterpart.
(2) Feminism sometimes clings too hard to a sense of identity that always equates "female" with "underdog".
(3) Everton head to Wembley for the FA Cup semi-final on Saturday but whether Roberto Martínez clings on beyond that game is open to doubt.
(4) Their families are said be be distraught at the news and have been clinging to the hope their daughters would want to come home.
(5) Her husband, a government official, went straight back to work after being rescued from the roof of the town hall, where he survived by clinging on to the perimeter fence while 70 of his colleagues drowned.
(6) It's just Boris being Boris, we say, as if life were just one extended episode of Have I Got News for You Alternatively, there is the scenario remainers cling to.
(7) Although it remains unclear why he chose to place the muddled woman in a kitchen – clinging to her mug and surrounded by children's toys – as opposed to say, in a laboratory or a truck, he claims all the words were authentically spoken by "women in dozens of focus groups around the country", prior to being stitched together in this latest triumph for the fashionable, verbatim school of drama.
(8) Theresa May signals support for UK-EU membership deal Read more On Dave went, clinging to the inverse principle that the less you have to say, the more time you should spend saying it.
(9) Obama said then: They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
(10) From time to time I'd bump into Amy she had good banter so we could chat a bit and have a laugh, she was a character but that world was riddled with half-cut, doped-up chancers, I was one of them, even in early recovery I was kept afloat only by clinging to the bodies of strangers so Winehouse, but for her gentle quirks didn't especially register.
(11) As I type I can smell the nauseating scent of death that clings to me still.
(12) An orderly process of dealing with asylum claims at the earliest point would be infinitely preferable to desperate families laying siege to central European railway stations, risking their lives clinging on to vehicles at Calais or suffocating in vehicles transporting them across borders.
(13) Arsenal are clinging to the hope that, like Olivier Giroud, who returned as a goal-scoring substitute in the 2-1 loss to United weeks ahead of schedule after fracturing his tibia in late August, Wilshere could yet surprise people and make a speedy recovery.
(14) That Russian meeting appears to have been the key to Milosevic's surrender of power as Ivanov informed him that he would have no support from Moscow if he attempted to cling on.
(15) But it may help steer a few more people away from Starbucks in the direction of Costa or one of those small independent coffee shops, book shops, grocers (etc, etc) whom we should cherish while they cling on in the face of unfair competition.
(16) The union claims Four Seasons, the UK's second largest care home provider, is also "clinging on by its fingernails".
(17) Others are said to be clinging on to the idea that Ukip remains a convenient means of taking votes from the Tories (witness the surreally complacent words of the Labour frontbencher Angela Eagle: “I’m not as worried as some might be about Ukip’s appeal to Labour voters.
(18) Hadlow, the controller of BBC2 since 2008 and BBC4 before that, is engaging company with a frustrating tendency to cling to the fence, at least in public.
(19) They cling to the realm, or the gods, or love: illusions.
(20) The only effect on postnatal development of the central nervous system (CNS) was a small transient change in neuromotor clinging ability of female offspring.
Holdfast
Definition:
(n.) Something used to secure and hold in place something else, as a long fiat-headed nail, a catch a hook, a clinch, a clamp, etc.; hence, a support.
(n.) A conical or branching body, by which a seaweed is attached to its support, and differing from a root in that it is not specially absorbent of moisture.
Example Sentences:
(1) In addition, distribution of lead and cadmium varied within the individual producer (Fucus vesiculosus) in such a way that the holdfast exhibited the highest concentration followed by the apcial tip and the branches of the first dichotomy was the lowest.
(2) Thus, we propose that the attachment of the holdfast to the cell is a true adhesion process and that the stalk tip and base of the flagellum must have compositions distinctly different from that of the remainder of the caulobacter cell surface.
(3) Upon closer examination, they were distinguishable on the basis of protein band profiles on polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis, gross colony characteristics, or holdfast composition or by DNA restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis with flagellin and S-layer gene probes.
(4) The mutant could also attach to the discarded holdfast produced by a shedding mutant.
(5) Also, attachment to the cell is accomplished by bond formations that occur not only at the time of holdfast production.
(6) One class of mutants made a normal holdfast by all available criteria, yet the attachment to the cell was very weak, such that the holdfast was readily shed.
(7) Once attached the bacterium appears to undergo a complex life cycle which involves the development of a long filament divided into a number of segments within which holdfasts or spores are formed.
(8) Deletion and complementation analysis of the hfaAB locus revealed two genes in a single operon; both were required for holdfast attachment to the cell.
(9) The structure and distribution of papillae suggest that the ventral sucker likely functions as a holdfast organ and the oral sucker as a probing organ involved in feeding.
(10) The formation of the holdfast, cell walls and septa is followed.
(11) Within each mother cell two new holdfast segments developed.
(12) The paunch epithelium was densely colonized by bacteria, many of which possessed holdfast elements that secured them tightly to this tissue and to other bacterial cells.
(13) Caulobacters attach to surfaces in the environment via their holdfasts, attachment organelles located at the base of the flagellum in swarmer cells and later at the end of the cellular stalk in the stalked cells which develop from the swarmer cells.
(14) Taken together, the data support the interpretation that there is a specialized attachment site for the holdfast at the base of the flagellum which later becomes the end of the stalk, but not a specialized region of the holdfast for attachment to this site.
(15) The bacterium is attached to the epithelial cell by a special segment (holdfast) and causes specific changes in the epithelial cell at the site of attachment.
(16) This was unexpected, since holdfast deficiency is often a characteristic of pleiotropic mutants obtained when selecting for loss of other polar structures.
(17) This information suggests that the protein encoded by the hfaA locus may have a direct role in the attachment of the holdfast to the cell, whereas hfaB may be involved in the positive regulation of hfaC.
(18) A single prostheca extends from one pole of mature cells, and cells attach to various substrata by means of a holdfast located at the distal tip of the appendage.
(19) However, there was no subsequent division, or flagellum or holdfast synthesis.
(20) Alternately, in some filaments, newly formed but not yet released holdfasts were converted into endospores, which were released in the same manner as holdfasts, presumably to spread the bacterial colony to other members of the rodent population.