Word.ws English Dictionary

elephant trunk

elephant trunk noun: an extended pillar-like mass of interstellar gas and dust found near a massive star.

elephant trunk: an extended pillar-like mass of interstellar gas and dust found near a massive star
Image: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

elephant trunk (plural elephant trunks)

  1. An extended pillar-like mass of interstellar gas and dust found near a massive star.
    • However, the behaviour of the molecular emission in elephant trunks and cometary globules clearly indicated the presence of neighbouring massive stars […]2012, Charles J. Lada, N.D. Kylafis, The Physics of Star Formation and Early Stellar Evolution, page 314
  2. (slang) An uncircumcised penis.
    • Just take the weird look of an uncircumcised penis! ('Anteater' or 'Elephant-Trunk')1999, Brian J. Morris, In Favour of Circumcision, page 76
    • Additionally, jokes geared toward the uncircumcised penis — that is, calling the foreskin an elephant trunk — with no comparable disparaging language ever applied to the circumcised penis points to the idea that an uncircumcised penis is still a deviant genital form.2010, Shirley R. Steinberg, Michael Kehler, Lindsay Cornish, Boy Culture: An Encyclopedia (page 129)
  3. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see elephant, trunk.

Forms of elephant trunk

pluralelephant trunks

Questions about elephant trunk

What does elephant trunk mean?
Elephant trunk means an extended pillar-like mass of interstellar gas and dust found near a massive star.
What part of speech is elephant trunk?
Elephant trunk is a noun.
What is the plural of elephant trunk?
The plural of elephant trunk is elephant trunks.

Words near elephant trunk in the dictionary

  1. elephant toothpaste
  2. elephant trap
  3. elephant traps
  4. elephant tree
  5. elephant trees
  6. elephant trunk
  7. elephant trunkfish
  8. elephant trunkfishes
  9. elephant trunks
  10. elephant walk
  11. elephant walks

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: elephant trunk (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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Cite this entry: “elephant trunk.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/elephant_trunk. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.