tusk
/tʌsk
/noun
1A long pointed tooth, especially one which protrudes from the closed mouth, as in the elephant, walrus, or wild boar.The tusk and several teeth of a Deinotherium giganteum, a distant relative of today's elephant and one of the largest mammals ever on Earth, were discovered on the Greek island Crete....
- Because poachers had obviously selected individuals for their tusks, the percentage of the elephants remaining without tusks had greatly increased.
- In flights over the park, Fraser and Kes Smith have found huge numbers of elephants killed for their tusks, at times with wounded and bewildered babies standing next to their slaughtered mothers.
1.1A long, tapering object or projection resembling a tusk: [as modifier]: a tusk tenon joint
Derivatives
tusked
- The tusked narwhal, white beluga whales and elusive bowhead whale all live off the northern part of this island.
- Several possible explanations for the presence of two forms, tusked and tuskless, exist: the fossils could be of different species; different ages within a species; or the same species, opposite sexes.
- In the 1970s men of rank travelled regularly as far as Santo to obtain tusked boars for their rituals although since Independence in 1980, there has been a resurgence of home-bred tusked boars.
tusky
- ‘The walrus is tusky, curmudgeonly,’ he blathered to the Boston Globe.
Origin
Old English tux, variant of tusc (see tush2).