Etymology

mastodon

mas·to·don
M3A1S1T1O1D2O1N1

Today it means: 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. Full definition →

translingual Mastodon
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mastodon · noun1

  1. translingual · derived fromMastodon
  2. English todaymastodon

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.

Mastodon · proper noun, noun2

See mastodon.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.