mammoth

American  

[mam-uhth] / ˈmæm əθ /

noun

• mammoths
  plural

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

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adjective

1. immensely large; huge; enormous.

   a mammoth organization.

mammoth British  

/ ˈmæməθ /

noun

1. 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

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adjective

1. of gigantic size or importance

mammoth Scientific  

/ măm′əth /

1. 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.

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Synonym Usage

See gigantic.

Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• mammoths
  plural

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

Explanation

The adjective mammoth is a great way to describe something really, really big, like those huge woolly elephants they’re still finding in the melting glaciers. The word mammoth is a pretty new one, dating back only to around 1700. It was first only a noun from the Russian word mammot, meaning “earth,” and used to name the newly-discovered fossilized creature that was thought to have burrowed in the earth like a mole. The word, a rare Russian contribution to English, was not used as an adjective until around 1800 — notably when President Thomas Jefferson used it to describe a very large cheese.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

mammoth mammoths

With Thursday’s sign-off by the California Public Utilities Commission, the mammoth merger is expected to close next week.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 14, 2026

This could include cutting taxes on investors’ gains on U.K. stocks, or diverting more of the U.K.’s mammoth personal savings toward domestic stocks, he says.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 10, 2026

And a resident of the northeastern Bulgarian city of Ruse found bones on the Danube river bed, which experts determined were the remains of a mammoth.

From BBC ● Jul. 30, 2026

Its unusual thickness indicates that it came from either an elephant or a mammoth.

From Science Daily ● Jul. 27, 2026

One of these harns was a mammoth Quonset hut; it brimmed with grain—Westland sorghum—and one of them housed a dark, pungent hill of milo grain worth considerable money—a hundred thousand dollars.

From "In Cold Blood" by Truman Capote

Sora transfixed the tech world by creating seemingly realistic videos of everything from woolly mammoths trekking across a snowy field to a stylish woman walking down a Tokyo street filled with glowing neon signs.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 30, 2026

They also compared the bone of modern elephants and steppe mammoths to determine which animal it came from.

From BBC ● Feb. 16, 2026

It peers across the street at the bubbling La Brea Tar Pits with their fiber-glass mammoths and saber-tooth cats.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 24, 2025

It had evolved to specialize in hunting megafauna — oversized, cold-tolerant, plant-eating mammals like mammoths and giant sloths and saber-toothed tigers.

From Salon ● May 15, 2025

“That may be, Your Grace,” Jon said, “but the mammoths are too big to pass through our gate.”

From "A Dance with Dragons" by George R. R. Martin

Related Words

• colossal
• enormous
• gargantuan
• gigantic
• immense
• large
• massive
• monstrous
• monumental
• prodigious
• vast