elephantine
Americanadjective
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pertaining to or resembling an elephant.
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huge, ponderous, or clumsy.
elephantine movements; elephantine humor.
adjective
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denoting, relating to, or characteristic of an elephant or elephants
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huge, clumsy, or ponderous
Etymology
Origin of elephantine
1620–30; < Latin elephantinus < Greek elephántinos. See elephant, -ine 1
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Ten years after, she has yet to finish her second book, which has bloomed into an elephantine “four-hundred-year history of mulatto people in fictional form” — what her husband Lenny calls a “mulatto ‘War and Peace.’”
From Los Angeles Times
The elephantine grand piano can easily bully its smaller partners or timidly overcompensate.
From New York Times
“He is mostly evasive. His pauses are elephantine. Broadway musicals could be mounted during his pauses.”
From Washington Post
By the 1960s, Mr. Lorayne was best known for holding audiences rapt with feats of memory that bordered on the elephantine.
From New York Times
It feels less oppressive, less elephantine, lighter and more graceful on its feet.
From Los Angeles Times
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
