Word.ws English Dictionary

elephant bird

elephant bird noun: any of the very large extinct flightless birds that make up the genera Aepyornis and Mullerornis within family Aepyornithidae, and lived in Madagascar until the 17th or 18th century; especially †Aepyornis maximus.

elephant bird: any of the very large extinct flightless birds that make up the genera Aepyornis and Mullerornis...
Image: frank wouters, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

elephant bird (plural elephant birds)

  1. Any of the very large extinct flightless birds that make up the genera Aepyornis and Mullerornis within family Aepyornithidae, and lived in Madagascar until the 17th or 18th century; especially †Aepyornis maximus.
    • The fossil record is also poor for moa and the aepyornid elephant birds, in that both are mainly known from remains that date from historical times.2002, Gregory S. Paul, Dinosaurs of the Air: The Evolution and Loss of Flight in Dinosaurs and Birds, page 306
    • Another very notable feature of Madagascar was the elephant bird (Aepyornis maximus), an enormous relative of the ostrich which reached 3 m in height.2009, Jonathan Adams, Species Richness: Patterns in the Diversity of Life, page 242

elephant bird meaning in Vietnamese

elephant bird in Vietnamese

extinct flightless bird
chim voi

Forms of elephant bird

pluralelephant birds
alternative formelephantbird

Origin of elephant bird

Apparently from Marco Polo's description of the legendary roc as being capable of seizing a small elephant.

Questions about elephant bird

What does elephant bird mean?
Elephant bird means any of the very large extinct flightless birds that make up the genera Aepyornis and Mullerornis within family Aepyornithidae, and lived in Madagascar until the 17th or 18th century; especially †Aepyornis maximus.
What is elephant bird in Vietnamese?
Elephant bird in Vietnamese is chim voi. See Elephant bird meaning in Vietnamese.
What part of speech is elephant bird?
Elephant bird is a noun.
What is the plural of elephant bird?
The plural of elephant bird is elephant birds.

Words near elephant bird in the dictionary

  1. Elephant and Castle
  2. elephant apple
  3. elephant apples
  4. elephant beetle
  5. elephant beetles
  6. elephant bird
  7. elephant birds
  8. elephant bush
  9. elephant calf
  10. elephant creeper
  11. elephant creepers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: elephant bird (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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