| 释义 |
mastodon Palæont.|ˈmæstədɒn|
[mod.L., f. Gr. µαστ-ός breast + ὀδοντ-, ὀδούς tooth.
The word was used in Fr. form (mastodonte) by Cuvier in 1806 in Ann. Mus. Hist. Nat. de Paris VIII. 270.]
A large extinct mammal resembling the elephant, characterized by having nipple-shaped tubercles in pairs on the crowns of the molar teeth.
1813Bakewell Introd. Geol. (1815) 430 The bones of the mastodon and mammoth are found only in the upper strata. 1842Tennyson Epic 36 Nature brings not back the Mastodon. 1851C. Cist Sk. Cincinnati in 1851 187 There are five other tubs, which in the aggregate, contain as much as the great mastodon just described. 1883Encycl. Brit. XV. 425/2 All known Mastodons are gigantic animals. 1936[see blue-print, blueprint n. 1 a]. 1965Listener 2 Sept. 337/2 It is high time we..began to inquire more coolly how we can expect this mastodon in our midst to behave.
fig.1847Emerson Repr. Men, Swedenborg, One of the missouriums and mastodons of literature, he is not to be measured by whole colleges of ordinary scholars. |