kouprey

American  

[koo-prey] / ˈku preɪ /

noun

koupreys, plural kouprey plural

1. a wild ox, Bos sauveli, weighing as much as 2,000 pounds (907 kilograms), with long legs, a humped back, and distinctive horns that arch forward on the male and spiral upward on the female: once known to inhabit the forests of Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam, the kouprey may have survived only in Cambodia and is now classified as possibly extinct.

---

kouprey British  

/ ˈkuːpreɪ /

noun

1. a large wild member of the cattle tribe, Box sauveli , of SE Asia, having a blackish-brown body and white legs: an endangered species

---

Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• kouprey
  plural
• koupreys
  plural

Etymology

Origin of kouprey

First recorded in 1935–40; from French, from spoken Khmer ko:prey (written gō brai ), from Pali gō “cow” + Khmer brai “forest”

Example Sentences

Two years later, Mr. Thayer mounted an elephant as part of an expedition to seek a possibly extinct Southeast Asian bovine called a kouprey.

From Washington Post • Jan. 4, 2023

Also endangered are the Indo-Chinese gibbon and the rare kouprey, a remnant of a mid-Miocene ancestor of modern cattle.

From Time Magazine Archive