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mammoth

UK/ˈmæməθ/US/ˈmæməθ/
adjectiveB2Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #9,177 of 15,258neutral

Mammoth means enormous in size. A mammoth task, a mammoth undertaking, mammoth proportions.

The adjective came from the animal — the woolly mammoth, an elephant of the ice age whose frozen remains turn up in Siberian permafrost complete with hair and stomach contents. A mammoth task is one that is huge rather than merely hard.

Jonathan Chen · CC BY-SA 4.0

Definitions of mammoth

  1. 1adjectivemammothEnormous in size.B2

    “It took a mammoth effort to clear the roads after the snowstorm.”

mammoth is a quality of size.

Where it comes from

From a Russian word for the animal, probably taken from a Siberian language and said to mean earth horn.

  1. mns-pro

    *mān-oŋt — earth horn

  2. Russian

    ма́мант

  3. English, today

    mammoth

From obsolete Russian ма́мант, modern ма́монт, probably from a urj word, such as mns-pro mān-oŋt (“earth horn”). Possibly influenced by behemoth. Adjectival use was popularized in the early 1800s by references to the Cheshire Mammoth Cheese presented to American paleontologist and president Thomas Jefferson.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire

Practise this word

mammoth in the wild

  • Elephant ivory is the most important source, but ivory from mammoth, walrus, hippopotamus, sperm whale, orca, narwhal and warthog is used as well.

    Ivory

  • The Columbian mammoth was among the last mammoth species, and the pygmy mammoths evolved from them on the Channel Islands of California.

    Columbian mammoth

  • Columbian mammoth remains have been found in association with Clovis culture artifacts.

    Columbian mammoth

  • The diet of the woolly mammoth was mainly forbs and grasses.

    Woolly mammoth

  • The completion of the mammoth genome project in 2015 sparked discussion about potentially reviving the woolly mammoth through several various methods.

    Woolly mammoth

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.