Synonyms

mammoth

American

[mam-uhth] / ˈmæm əθ /

noun

any large, elephantlike mammal of the extinct genus Mammuthus, from the Pleistocene Epoch, having hairy skin and ridged molar teeth.

adjective

immensely large; huge; enormous.

a mammoth organization.

mammoth British

/ ˈmæməθ /

noun

any large extinct elephant of the Pleistocene genus Mammuthus (or Elephas ), such as M. primigenius ( woolly mammoth ), having a hairy coat and long curved tusks

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

adjective

of gigantic size or importance

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

mammoth Scientific

/ măm′əth /

Any of various extinct elephants of the genus Mammuthus, having long, upwardly curving tusks and thick hair. Mammoths grew to great size and lived throughout the Northern Hemisphere during the Ice Age.

Related Words

See gigantic.

Etymology

Origin of mammoth

1690–1700; < Russian mam(m)ot (now mámont ), first used in reference to remains of the animal found in Siberia; origin uncertain

Compare meaning

How does mammoth compare to similar and commonly confused words? Explore the most common comparisons:

mastodon vs. mammoth

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.

After an electrifying short program gave him a mammoth lead in St. Louis, the 21-year-old known as "Quad God" performed a relatively modest, by his own standards, three quadruple jumps.

From Barron's

England are still 228 runs adrift from the mammoth 435 the hosts set them to win in Adelaide with just four wickets left and a daunting task ahead on day five.

From Barron's

So it goes throughout this visually mammoth but brainless audio-visual excursion.

From The Wall Street Journal

The branching narratives, full of side quests and incidental characters, offer plenty of material to draw from, but deciding what to bring to the screen is a mammoth task.

From BBC

I go heavy on the turbinado — those mammoth, amber flakes that look like tiny geological formations — and I don’t apologize for it.

From Salon

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023