Word.ws English Dictionary

hippotamus

hippotamus noun: obsolete spelling and common present-day misspelling of hippopotamus.

Noun

hippotamus

  1. Obsolete spelling and common present-day misspelling of hippopotamus
    • It is a remarkable fact that when the hippotamus is at liberty in its native stream, not only the ears and the nostrils, but even the ridge over the eyes are of a bright scarlet colour, so brilliant indeed that colour can scarcely convey an idea of the hue.1868, John George Wood, The Natural History of Man, page 379

Origin of hippotamus

Syncopic form of hippopotamus.

Questions about hippotamus

What does hippotamus mean?
Hippotamus means obsolete spelling and common present-day misspelling of hippopotamus.
What part of speech is hippotamus?
Hippotamus is a noun.

Words near hippotamus in the dictionary

  1. hipposaurid
  2. hipposaurids
  3. hipposiderid
  4. hipposiderids
  5. hipposudoric acid
  6. hippotamus
  7. hippotaur
  8. hippotaurs
  9. hippotayne
  10. hippotaynes
  11. hippotherapy

Source and license

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