wapiti

plural wapitis

1. CanadaUSThe American elk (Cervus canadensis).

   3 more examples

   Of deer there are in North America perhaps eight species : the black-tailed deer of the Pacific coast ; the mule-deer, and the white-tailed deer, of the Upper Missouri region and westward; the common deer of the United States east of the Missouri ; the wapiti of the northern and northwestern portions of the United States; one or two species of reindeer ; and the moose of the northern portion of the continent. […] Next to the moose, the wapiti or American elk (Cervus Canadensis) is the largest deer in North America.

   1877 April, Sanborn Tenney, “The Plant-Eaters of North America”, in Popular Science Monthly, volume 10

   In connection with the work of the forest reserves I desire again to urge upon the Congress the importance of authorizing the President to set aside certain portions of these reserves or other public lands as game refuges for the preservation of the bison, the wapiti, and other large beasts once so abundant in our woods and mountains and on our great plains, and now tending toward extinction.

   1904 December 6, Theodore Roosevelt, Fourth State of the Union Address

   You see, if we could keep giraffes or reindeer or some other species of browsing animal there we could explain the general absence of vegetation by a reference to the fauna of the garden: ‘You can’t have wapiti and Darwin tulips, you know, so we didn’t put down any bulbs last year.’ As it is, we haven’t got the wapiti, and the Darwin tulips haven’t survived the fact that most of the cats of the neighbourhood hold a parliament in the centre of the tulip bed; […].

   1919, Saki, “The Occasional Garden”, in The Toys of Peace, and Other Papers

   Synonyms: elk, red deer, wawaskeesh