mammoth

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   a large extinct elephant-like mammal of the genus Mammuthus, often with long curved tusks and a hairy coat

   A woolly mammoth skeleton dominates the museum's Ice Age gallery.

2. 2
   adj

   extremely large, extensive, or difficult

   The archive faced a mammoth task when it began digitizing a century of records.

Appears in

Simplified etymology

Mammoth came into English in the late 17th century from Russian mamont, the name used in Siberia for the fossil remains and frozen carcasses of the large hairy elephant-like animal. The Russian word probably came from a Siberian expression meaning ‘earth horn’. By the early 19th century mammoth was also being used for anything exceptionally large.

Borrowed from obsolete Russian mamant, now mamont, probably from a Uralic source such as Proto-Mansi *mān-oŋt ("earth horn"), referring to tusks found underground. English developed the adjective "enormous" from the animal's size; the sense was popularized in the early nineteenth century by the celebrated Mammoth Cheese presented to Thomas Jefferson.

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External links

• Google Images
• Cambridge Dictionary
• Wiktionary