tender

Forms

1.Sensitive or painful to the touch.
- Be careful: that area is tender.
2.Easily bruised or injured; not firm or hard; delicate.
3.Physically weak; not able to endure hardship.
4.Soft and easily chewed.
- The Matrix is telling my brain this steak is tender, succulent, and juicy.

1.The inner flight muscle (pectoralis minor) of poultry.
2.A railroad car towed behind a steam engine to carry fuel and water.
- Half the coal was out of the tender, half the fire out of the box, half the trucks were off the track, so violent was the stopping.
- Of locomotive interest was "an engine house for spare engines which was about 60 ft. × 51 ft.; on the outside of this was an immense turntable sufficient to turn the engine and tender at once."
3.A naval ship that functions as a mobile base for other ships.

Rare· #4733

From Middle English tender, tendere

From Anglo-Norman tender, Old French tendre

From Latin tener, tenerum (“soft, delicate”).