tender

Meanings

Adjective

• Sensitive or painful to the touch.
• Easily bruised or injured; not firm or hard; delicate.
• Physically weak; not able to endure hardship.
• Soft and easily chewed.
• Sensible to impression and pain; easily pained.
• Fond, loving, gentle, or sweet.
• Young and inexperienced.
• Adapted to excite feeling or sympathy; expressive of the softer passions; pathetic.
• Apt to give pain; causing grief or pain; delicate.
• Heeling over too easily when under sail; said of a vessel.
• Exciting kind concern; dear; precious.
• Careful to keep inviolate, or not to injure; used with of.

Noun

• Care, kind concern, regard.
• The inner flight muscle (pectoralis minor) of poultry.
• Someone who tends or waits on someone.
• A railroad car towed behind a steam engine to carry fuel and water.
• A naval ship that functions as a mobile base for other ships.
• A smaller boat used for transportation between a large ship and the shore.
• Anything which is offered, proffered, put forth or bid with the expectation of a response, answer, or reply.
• A means of payment such as a check or cheque, cash or credit card.
• A formal offer to buy or sell something.
• Any offer or proposal made for acceptance.

Adverb

• tenderly

Verb

• To make tender or delicate; to weaken.
• To feel tenderly towards; to regard fondly or with consideration.
• To work on a tender.
• To offer, to give.
• to offer a payment, as at sales or auctions.

Related

Similar words

• nesh
• dinghy
• offer

Origin

• From Middle English tender, tendere, from Anglo-Norman tender, Old French tendre, from Latin tener.
• From Middle English tender, tendur, tendir, tendre, from the adjective (see above).
• From Middle English tendren, from the adjective (see above).
• From tend + -er.
• From Middle English tendren, from Old French tendre.