Mastodon
nounUS /-dən/
Etymology See mastodon.
1
A nickname for both the 4-8-0 and (though erroneously) the 4-10-0 train configurations.
mastodon
nounalso spelled MastodonUK /ˈmæs.tə.dɒn/ · US /ˈmæs.tə.dɑn/
Etymology First attested 1813, from translingual Mastodon (1806), coined by French naturalist Georges Cuvier, from masto- (“breast”) + -odon (“tooth”), due to the mammilloid (“nipple-shaped”) projections on the crowns of the extinct mammal's molars.
1
Extinct elephant-like mammal of the genus †Mammut that flourished worldwide from Miocene through Pleistocene times; differs from elephants and mammoths in the form of the molar teeth.
- When, exactly, Europeans first stumbled upon the bones of an American mastodon is unclear. An isolated molar unearthed in a field in upstate New York was sent off to London in 1705; it was labeled the “tooth of a Giant”.2014, Elizabeth Kolbert, chapter 2, in The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, Henry Holt and Company:
2
Figuratively Anything awkwardly large or unwieldy.
- The battery is dying, and Natalia's iPhone charger doesn't fit my mastodon of a phone anyway.2017, Nina Laurin, Girl Last Seen:
- Nor does it work for governance: the policy has become such a mastodon that we can't adapt it quickly enough to different regions or different circumstances.2020, Finn Laursen, The Development of the EU as a Sea-Policy Actor:
- Derived terms
- Mastodon, mastodonian, Mastodonian, mastodonic, mastodonlike, mastodontid
- Related terms
- amastia, glyptodon, gynecomastia, mastoid, mastos, orthodontist, periodontal