elephantine

English

Pronunciation

  • (US) IPA(key): /ɛl.ə.ˈfæn.tin/, /ɛl.ə.ˈfæn.tɪn/, /ɛl.ə.ˈfæn.taɪn/

Adjective

elephantine (comparative more elephantine, superlative most elephantine)

  1. Of, pertaining to, or characteristic of elephants.
    • 1979, Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, →ISBN, page 132:
      The scene around them was currently plunged into gloom. Dark mists swirled round them and elephantine shapes lurked indistinctly in the shadows.
  2. Very large.

Quotations

  • 1989, H. T. Willetts (translator), Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (author), August 1914, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, →ISBN, page 179:
    This last summer Hanecki had captured Lenin’s imagination with his plans to found a trading company of his own in Europe, or take a partnership in some existing firm and make guaranteed monthly remittances to the Party out of his profits. This was not a Russian pipe dream: every move had been worked out with impressive precision. Kuba hadn’t thought of it himself, it was the brainchild of the elephantine genius Parvus, who had been writing to him from Constantinople. Parvus, once as poor as any other Social Democrat, had gone to Turkey to organize strikes, and now wrote frankly that he had all the money he needed (if rumor was right, he was fabulously wealthy) and that the time had come for the Party too to get rich.

Synonyms

Derived terms

Translations


Latin

Adjective

elephantine

  1. vocative masculine singular of elephantinus
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