Word.ws English Dictionary

eohippus

/ˈiːəʊˌhɪpəs/

eohippus noun: an extinct early Eocene mammal (Hyracotherium leporinum), ancestral to the modern horse.

eohippus: an extinct early Eocene mammal (Hyracotherium leporinum), ancestral to the modern horse
Image: Charles Robert Knight, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

eohippus (plural eohippi or eohippuses)

  1. An extinct early Eocene mammal (Hyracotherium leporinum), ancestral to the modern horse.
    • An eohippus may "evolve" into a horse, but when we say that a society of hunters and gatherers evolves into a farming village, we are using the word "evolves" as a metaphor for a process of directional change.1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, London: Rider/Hutchinson & Co., page 61

Forms of eohippus

pluraleohippi
pluraleohippuses

Origin of eohippus

Originally a genus name, Eohippus, formed in New Latin, from Ancient Greek ἠώς (ēṓs, “dawn”) + ἵππος (híppos, “horse”). By surface analysis, eo- + Latin hippus.

Questions about eohippus

What does eohippus mean?
Eohippus means an extinct early Eocene mammal (Hyracotherium leporinum), ancestral to the modern horse.
What part of speech is eohippus?
Eohippus is a noun.
How do you pronounce eohippus?
Eohippus is pronounced /ˈiːəʊˌhɪpəs/.
What is the plural of eohippus?
The plural of eohippus is eohippi.

Words near eohippus in the dictionary

  1. Eoghan
  2. EOGs
  3. eogyrinid
  4. eogyrinids
  5. eohippi
  6. eohippus
  7. eohippuses
  8. EOI
  9. EOIL
  10. EOIs
  11. EOKA

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: eohippus (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: “eohippus.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/eohippus. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.