river horse

plural river horses · alternative river-horse

1. uncommonA hippopotamus.

   Liverpool started and snorted like a river-horse roused amongst his reeds by thunder.

   1849, Currer Bell [pseudonym; Charlotte Brontë], “The Winding-up”, in Shirley. A Tale. […], volume III, London: Smith, Elder and Co., […], →OCLC, page 303

   4 more examples

   The river-horse feeds upon the herbage of the Nile, and the behemoth is said to eat grass like an ox.

   1808, Thomas Shaw, Travels Or Observations

   It is out of the idolatrous dotings of the old Egyptians upon broiled ibis and roasted river horse, that you see the mummies of those creatures in their huge bake-houses the pyramids.

   1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “Loomings”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC, page 4

   “I am waited for in Egypt,” answered the Swallow. “To-morrow my friends will fly up to the Second Cataract. The river-horse couches there among the bulrushes, and on a great granite throne sits the God Memnon.”

   1888, Oscar Wilde, “The Happy Prince”, in The Happy Prince and Other Tales, London: Duckworth, published 1928, page 25

   Here, before a feast that would prick the dead with appetite, were shapes of beasts with heads of men, asses, elephants, bulls, horses, swine, foxes, riverhorses, dromedaries; […]

   1909, George Meredith, The Palace of Aklis