mastodon

plural mastodons · alternative mastodont

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

   Synonyms: incognitum

2. figurativelyAnything 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

   1 more example

   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

1. social mediaA decentralized microblogging platform, part of the Fediverse.

   However, the underlying design of platforms within [The Free Network] such as Mastodon, Diaspora and others ... opens the door to security and harassment problems.

   2020, Kevin Veale, Gaming the Dynamics of Online Harassment, Springer International Publishing, →ISBN, page 113

   1 more example

   Since Musk bought the bird app last month, users are looking for ways to access Mastodon, the open source microblogging platform that isn’t quite Twitter but seems to be the closest thing to it, and they’re signing up for its many servers in droves.

   2022 November 9, Amanda Hoover, “Twitter Users Have Caused a Mastodon Meltdown”, in Wired, San Francisco, Calif.: Condé Nast Publications, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 09 Nov 2022

plural Mastodons

1. A nickname for both the 4-8-0 and (though erroneously) the 4-10-0 train configurations.