mastodon
/ˈmæs.tə.dɑn/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.55 in modern English
11
Scrabble Score
8
Letters
3
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
Extinct elephant-like mammal of the genus †Mammut that flourished worldwide from Miocene through Pleistocene times; differs from elephants and mammoths in the form of the molar teeth.
name
A decentralized microblogging platform, part of the Fediverse.
noun
A nickname for both the 4-8-0 and (though erroneously) the 4-10-0 train configurations.
Example Sentences
- "When, exactly, Europeans first stumbled upon the bones of an American mastodon is unclear. An isolated molar unearthed in a field in upstate New York was sent off to London in 1705; it was labeled the “tooth of a Giant”."
- "The battery is dying, and Natalia's iPhone charger doesn't fit my mastodon of a phone anyway."
- "Nor does it work for governance: the policy has become such a mastodon that we can't adapt it quickly enough to different regions or different circumstances."
- "However, the underlying design of platforms within [The Free Network] such as Mastodon, Diaspora and others ... opens the door to security and harassment problems."
- "Since Musk bought the bird app last month, users are looking for ways to access Mastodon, the open source microblogging platform that isn’t quite Twitter but seems to be the closest thing to it, and they’re signing up for its many servers in droves."
Etymology
First attested 1813, from translingual Mastodon (1806), coined by French naturalist Georges Cuvier, from masto- (“breast”) + -odon (“tooth”), due to the mammilloid (“nipple-shaped”) projections on the crowns of the extinct mammal's molars.
Word Breakdown
- Root: Mastodon
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈmæs.tə.dɑn/
- British English: /ˈmæs.tə.dɒn/