dugong
Americannoun
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of dugong
1790–1800; < New Latin < German: first recorded as dugung, apparently misrepresentation of Malay duyung, or a cognate Austronesian word
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Example Sentences
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Pyenson also noted that sea cow fossils often appear in mixed species groups, making it likely that further research at the site could uncover additional dugong relatives.
From Science Daily ● Dec. 12, 2025
For Alice McGown, a Los Angeles-based activist, the right to protest at COP meant dressing as a dugong, or seacow, holding a sign saying: “No More Fossils.”
From Washington Times ● Dec. 3, 2023
It also meant getting preapproval from authorities, dragging the dugong through security and dressing into its heavy felt in the still-hot desert environment of Dubai’s Expo City, where COP28 is taking place.
From Seattle Times ● Dec. 3, 2023
The dugong population of New Caledonia, a French island territory in the South Pacific, is now listed as endangered.
From Scientific American ● Dec. 9, 2022
He knew they were amphibious, and that, where the dugong was found, land could not be a long way off.
From The Castaways by Pearse, Lolbran
The region hosts the world's second-largest population of dugongs -- herbivorous marine mammals known as "sea cows" that are listed as vulnerable -- with an estimated 5,000 to 7,500 individuals.
From Barron's ● Mar. 17, 2026
Rising temperatures and increasing salinity place further pressures on the seagrass meadows that dugongs depend on.
From Science Daily ● Dec. 12, 2025
The goal was to document a seafloor famously lush in seagrass, corals, turtles, dugongs, rays and sharks.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 28, 2025
This characteristic, called pachyosteosclerosis, is absent in living cetaceans - the group including whales, dolphins and porpoises - but present in sirenians, another marine mammal group including manatees and dugongs.
From Reuters ● Aug. 2, 2023
Similar totemic clan functions appear in the islands of Torres Straits, the Turtle and Dugong clans performing ceremonies to increase the supply of turtles and to attract dugongs.
From Introduction to the History of Religions Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV by Jastrow, Morris
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.
