musk ox

British

noun

a large bovid mammal, Ovibos moschatus, which has a dark shaggy coat, short legs, and widely spaced downward-curving horns and emits a musky smell: now confined to the tundras of Canada and Greenland

"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

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.

For the same reason, the government has also had to postpone the annual winter musk ox hunt that was due to start on January 31.

From Barron's • Feb. 10, 2026

Alex Lanchester, Frozen Planet II producer, said that "the camera operator who filmed the musk ox story had to camp out in the Arctic in blizzard conditions".

From BBC • Sep. 5, 2022

Deng and Wang then compared the data with those on other giraffoids and animals, including wild sheep and musk ox, which lock horns or butt heads to compete for mates.

From Science Magazine • Jun. 1, 2022

As imaginative as many of the entries on this list were — a rabid musk ox or reindeer, or an August blizzard — wildfires never made the list.

From Washington Post • Aug. 9, 2018

It meant that the musk ox was stunned and speechless . . . for a few seconds anyway, until he found his voice again.

From "The Very, Very Far North" by Dan Bar-el

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