elephantine

/ɛl.əˈfæn.tin/

elephantine adjective: of, relating to, resembling, or characteristic of elephants.

Adjective (1)

elephantine (comparative more elephantine, superlative most elephantine)

Of, relating to, resembling, or characteristic of elephants.
- The scene around them was currently plunged into gloom. Dark mists swirled round them and elephantine shapes lurked indistinctly in the shadows.1979, Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, →ISBN, page 132
- This last summer Hanecki had captured Lenin’s imagination with his plans to found a trading company of his own in Europe, or take a partnership in some existing firm and make guaranteed monthly remittances to the Party out of his profits. This was not a Russian pipe dream: every move had been...1989, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, translated by H. T. Willetts, August 1914, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, →ISBN, page 179
Synonyms:

elephantesque, elephantic, elephantish, elephantlike, elephanty
Very large.
- He comes into Brewer from the south, seeing it in the smoky shadow before dawn as a gradual multiplication of houses among the trees beside the road and then as a treeless waste of industry, shoe factories and bottling plants and company parking lots and knitting mills converted to electronics...1960, John Updike, 'Rabbit, Run', page 35
- Ugly, clumsy and far from silent, with elephantine point mechanisms at the car sheds, it nevertheless works and has been brought up to date electrically for further public service.1964 July, “The mythology of monorails”, in Modern Railways, page 1
Synonyms:

ample, big, exceeding, cosmic, bodacious, broad, commodious, considerable, expansive, good-sized

Noun

elephantine (plural elephantines)

Any member of the subfamily Elephantinae of elephants and their extinct close relatives.

Proper noun capitalized: Elephantine

Elephantine

An island in the river Nile, and the ancient city that occupied it.

Adjective (2) capitalized: Elephantine

Elephantine (not comparable)

Of, from, or pertaining to Elephantine or the Elephantine people.

elephantine meaning in Tamil and Malayalam

elephantine in Tamil

யானை சார்ந்த, யானை போன்ற, மிகப் பெரிய, செயல் நயப்பற்ற

elephantine in Malayalam

huge, enormous, gigantic: ഗജതുല്യമായ, ആനയുടെയത്ര വലിപ്പമുള്ള, ഭീമാകാരം, വമ്പിച്ച, ബൃഹത്തായ, അതിമാത്രമായ

Examples of elephantine in a sentence

Kuba hadn’t thought of it himself, it was the brainchild of the elephantine genius Parvus, who had been writing to him from Constantinople.1989, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, translated by H. T. Willetts, August 1914, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, →ISBN, page 179:
Overhead and all around came the elephantine sounds of hundreds of students on the move.2003, J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter: The Order of the Phoenix, →ISBN, page 248:
And then shortening its life though the wear and tear of tamping to counter the effect of elephantine passenger vehicles.2020 May 6, Prof. Andrew McNaughton, “Time to challenge some sacred philosophies of recent years”, in Rail, pages 32, 34:

All 11 example sentences with elephantine

Synonyms of elephantine

30 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of elephantine

Forms of elephantine

Adjective
comparative	more elephantine
superlative	most elephantine
Noun
plural	elephantines

Origin of elephantine

From Latin elephantīn(us). By surface analysis, elephant + -ine.

From Ancient Greek Ἐλεφαντίνη (Elephantínē).

Words formed from elephantine

elephantine epoch
elephantine leprosy
elephantine tortoise

Phrases with elephantine

elephantine tortoises

Questions about elephantine

What does elephantine mean?: Elephantine means of, relating to, resembling, or characteristic of elephants.
What is elephantine in Tamil?: Elephantine in Tamil is யானை சார்ந்த, யானை போன்ற, மிகப் பெரிய. See Elephantine meaning in Tamil.
How do you use elephantine in a sentence?: Kuba hadn’t thought of it himself, it was the brainchild of the elephantine genius Parvus, who had been writing to him from Constantinople.
What part of speech is elephantine?: Elephantine can be an adjective, a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce elephantine?: Elephantine is pronounced /ɛl.əˈfæn.tin/.

Words near elephantine in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: elephantine (page history and authors); Elephantine (page history and authors); elephantine (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); elephantine (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license). 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.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-elephantine.wav.

Cite this entry: “elephantine.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/elephantine. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.