dugong
Americannoun
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dugongs
plural
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
A woman dressed as a dugong, a rare marine mammal, beseeched passers-by to end the burning of fossil fuels.
From New York Times ● Dec. 9, 2023
But while looking cartoonish, McGown offered serious criticism of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Co.’s plans to expand its offshore ultrasour gas operations into a protected area home to the dugong.
From Seattle Times ● Dec. 3, 2023
This year, the union is sounding the alarm about the dugong - a large and docile marine mammal that lives from the eastern coast of Africa to the western Pacific Ocean.
From Washington Times ● Dec. 9, 2022
The dugong is found in large numbers in Hervey's Bay, from which the famed oil is manufactured, also the pearl oyster.
From A Source Book of Australian History by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
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
The team also identified a previously unknown species of ancient sea cow that was much smaller than modern dugongs.
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
The whole tribe of paddle-steamers, such as seals and walruses and dugongs, are only coasters.
From Concerning Animals and Other Matters by Edward Hamilton Aitken
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.
