Adjacent Words

Elephantine definitions

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Webster's 1828 Dictionary

ELEPHANT'INE, a. Pertaining to the elephant; huge; resembling an elephant; or perhaps white, like ivory.
1. In antiquity, an appellation given to certain books in which the Romans registered the transactions of the senate, magistrates, emperors and generals; so called perhaps, as being made of ivory.

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

adj
1: of great mass; huge and bulky; "a jumbo jet"; "jumbo shrimp" [syn: elephantine, gargantuan, giant, jumbo]

Merriam Webster's

adjective Date: 1610 1. a. having enormous size or strength ; massive b. clumsy, ponderous <elephantine verse> 2. of or relating to an elephant

Merriam Webster's

geographical name island S Egypt in the Nile opposite Aswân population 1814

Oxford Reference Dictionary

adj. 1 of elephants. 2 a huge. b clumsy, unwieldy (elephantine movements; elephantine humour). Etymology: L elephantinus f. Gk elephantinos (as ELEPHANT)

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Elephantine El`e*phan"tine, a. [L. elephantinus of ivory, Gr. ?: cf. F. ['e]l['e]phantin.] Pertaining to the elephant, or resembling an elephant (commonly, in size); hence, huge; immense; heavy; as, of elephantine proportions; an elephantine step or tread. Elephantine epoch (Geol.), the epoch distinguished by the existence of large pachyderms. --Mantell. Elephantine tortoise (Zo["o]l.), a huge land tortoise; esp., Testudo elephantina, from islands in the Indian Ocean; and T. elephantopus, from the Galapagos Islands.

Collin's Cobuild Dictionary

If you describe something as elephantine, you mean that you think it is large and clumsy. ...elephantine clumsiness... His legs were elephantine. ADJ [disapproval]

International Standard Bible Encyclopedia

el-e-fan-ti'-ne.

See SEVENEH.

Soule's Dictionary of English Synonyms

a. 1. Huge, immense, gigantic, colossal, Cyclopean, Herculean, enormous, very large. 2. Clumsy, unwieldy.

Moby Thesaurus

Atlantean, Brobdingnagian, Cyclopean, Gargantuan, Herculean, Homeric, Latinate, abysmal, arid, astronomic, awkward, barren, blah, blank, bloodless, bombastic, bulky, characterless, clumsy, cold, colorless, colossal, cramped, cumbersome, cumbrous, dead, dismal, draggy, drearisome, dreary, dry, dryasdust, dull, dusty, effete, elephantlike, empty, enormous, epic, etiolated, fade, flat, forced, formal, gargantuan, giant, giantlike, gigantic, graceless, guinde, halting, heavy, heavy-handed, heroic, ho-hum, hollow, huge, hulking, hulky, immense, inane, inexcitable, infinite, inkhorn, insipid, jejune, jumbo, labored, leaden, lifeless, low-spirited, lubberly, lumbering, lumpish, lumpy, maladroit, mammoth, massive, massy, mighty, monster, monstrous, monumental, mountainous, pale, pallid, pedestrian, plodding, pointless, poky, pompous, ponderous, prodigious, profound, sesquipedalian, slow, solemn, spiritless, sterile, stiff, stilted, stodgy, stuffy, stupendous, superficial, tasteless, tedious, titanic, towering, tremendous, turgid, ungraceful, uninspired, unlively, unwieldy, vapid, vast, wooden