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saber-toothed tiger

American  

noun

  1. any of several extinct members of the cat family Felidae from the Oligocene to Pleistocene Epochs, having greatly elongated, saberlike upper canine teeth.


Etymology

Origin of saber-toothed tiger

First recorded in 1840–50

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.

Emojis, Disney characters, cigarettes and more pile up in humorous scenes that include a saber-toothed tiger driving a dune buggy and a pair of corvids fighting over a worm.

From The Wall Street Journal • Feb. 27, 2026

Other natural history items up for auction on Thursday include a complete T-rex rooted tooth, which sold for just over $100,000, a Triceratops skull, which sold for $661,500, and a saber-toothed tiger skull.

From BBC • Jul. 28, 2022

Possibly this was a sensible adaptation for our hunter-gatherer forebears; if there’s a saber-toothed tiger standing in front of you, almost anything you might try is potentially more useful than patiently waiting to become lunch.

From Washington Post • May 16, 2022

Plus, some of its displays are wildly outdated — such as the creaky animatronic saber-toothed tiger that is forever devouring a giant ground sloth, its tinny roar on permanent loop.

From Los Angeles Times • Aug. 26, 2019

He’d planted saber-toothed tiger teeth by mistake, and raised a batch of skeleton kittens from the soil.

From "The House of Hades" by Rick Riordan