Word.ws English Dictionary

elephant gun

elephant gun noun: a large-calibre firearm capable of killing an elephant or other big game.

elephant gun: a large-calibre firearm capable of killing an elephant or other big game
Image: Van Altena, Edward, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

elephant gun (plural elephant guns)

  1. A large-calibre firearm capable of killing an elephant or other big game.
    • Lord John was standing at gaze with his finger on the trigger of his elephant-gun, his eager hunter's soul shining from his fierce eyes.1912, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost World […], London; New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC
    • In St. James's Street there used to be several shops which would sell you any form of lethalness, from a rook-rifle to an elephant-gun, with the greatest urbanity.1951, John Wyndham, The Day of the Triffids, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, published 1954, page 151

Forms of elephant gun

pluralelephant guns

Questions about elephant gun

What does elephant gun mean?
Elephant gun means a large-calibre firearm capable of killing an elephant or other big game.
What part of speech is elephant gun?
Elephant gun is a noun.
What is the plural of elephant gun?
The plural of elephant gun is elephant guns.

Words near elephant gun in the dictionary

  1. elephant foot yam
  2. elephant foot yams
  3. elephant garlic
  4. elephant grass
  5. elephant grasses
  6. elephant gun
  7. elephant guns
  8. elephant in the corner
  9. elephant in the room
  10. elephant juice
  11. elephant leg

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: elephant gun (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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