Word.ws English Dictionary

hippopotamos

hippopotamos is the archaic form of hippopotamus.

Meaning of hippopotamus

Noun

hippopotamus (plural hippopotami or hippopotamuses or hippopotamus)

  1. A semi-aquatic, herbivorous, African hoofed mammal of the family Hippopotamidae.
  2. The common hippopotamus (Hippopotamus amphibius).
    • These were the first hippopotami that we had ever seen, and, to judge by their insatiable curiosity, I should judge that we were the first white men that they had ever seen.1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC

Forms of hippopotamos

pluralhippopotamoi
pluralhippopotamoses
pluralhippopotamos

Questions about hippopotamos

What is hippopotamos the archaic form of?
Hippopotamos is the archaic form of hippopotamus.

Words near hippopotamos in the dictionary

  1. hippopotamids
  2. hippopotamine
  3. hippopotamoi
  4. hippopotamoid
  5. hippopotamoids
  6. hippopotamos
  7. hippopotamoses
  8. hippopotamus
  9. Hippopotamus Defence
  10. Hippopotamus Defences
  11. hippopotamuses

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hippopotamos (page history and authors); hippopotamus (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.

Last updated:

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