Word.ws English Dictionary

incognitum

incognitum noun: an American mammoth or mastodon, especially when presumed extant.

Noun

incognitum (plural incognita)

  1. (archaic) An American mammoth or mastodon, especially when presumed extant.
    • When, as president, he dispatched Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to the Northwest, Jefferson hoped that they would come upon live incognita roaming its forests.2014, Elizabeth Kolbert, chapter 2, in The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, Henry Holt and Company

Forms of incognitum

pluralincognita

Origin of incognitum

Borrowed from Latin incognitum (“unknown”). Coined by William Hunter.

Questions about incognitum

What does incognitum mean?
Incognitum means an American mammoth or mastodon, especially when presumed extant.
What part of speech is incognitum?
Incognitum is a noun.
What is the plural of incognitum?
The plural of incognitum is incognita.

Words near incognitum in the dictionary

  1. incognitas
  2. incognition
  3. incognitions
  4. incognito
  5. incognitos
  6. incognitum
  7. incognizability
  8. incognizable
  9. incognizance
  10. incognizant
  11. incognoscenti

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: incognitum (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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