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mastodon

mas·to·don

UK/ˈmæs.tə.dɒn/ US/ˈmæs.tə.dɑn/ rare

noun

1.

extinct elephant-like mammal that flourished worldwide from Miocene through Pleistocene times; differ from mammoths in the form of the molar teeth

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Origin

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.

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WordNet 2.1 (Princeton University). Wiktionary (CC BY-SA). CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. WordNet 2.1 Copyright Princeton University. All rights reserved. Wiktionary content is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence.