mammoth
/ˈmæməθ/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.40 in modern English
16
Scrabble Score
7
Letters
2
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
Any species of the extinct genus Mammuthus, of large, usually hairy, elephant-like mammals with long curved tusks and an inclined back, which became extinct with the last retreat of ice age glaciers during the late Pleistocene period, and are known from fossils, frozen carcasses, and Paleolithic cave paintings found in North America and Eurasia.
noun
Something very large of its kind.
adj
Comparable to a mammoth in its size; very large, huge, gigantic.
Example Sentences
- "Maimanto, as they say a sea elephant which is never seene, but accordinge to the Samuites he workes himselfe under grownde and so they finde his teeth or homes or bones in Pechore and Nova Zemla of which they […]"
- "The Mammotovoy, which is dug out of the Earth in Siberia."
- "The old Siberian Russians affirm that the Mammuth is very like the Elephant."
- "Many of our readers will remember the skeleton of the American mammoth, now the Mastodonton, being exhibited in London by Mr. Rembrandt Peale."
- "The last load, as we Yankees say, was a "Mammoth": […] producing an aggregate of nearly twelve cords."
- "That is a lot of ship, about the size of big tankers before they grew so rapidly to become supers, mammoths and oilbergs."
Etymology
From obsolete Russian ма́мант (mámant), modern ма́монт (mámont), probably from a Uralic word, such as Proto-Mansi *mān-oŋt (“earth horn”). Possibly influenced by behemoth. Adjectival use was popularized in the early 1800s by references to the Cheshire Mammoth Cheese presented to American paleontologist and president Thomas Jefferson.
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: ма́мант, *mān-oŋt
Usage
Inflected Forms
Derived Forms
Phrases
Columbian mammoth
mammoth steppe
steppe mammoth
woolly mammoth
wooly mammoth
mammoth powder
mammoth tree
mammoth-wise