Word.ws English Dictionary

oliphant

oliphant noun: an elephant.

Noun

oliphant (plural oliphants)

  1. (archaic, historical) An elephant.
    • She [Diana] hath ſent (to plague vs) a huge ſauadge Boare,
      Of an vn-meaſured height and magnitude.
      […]
      His briſtles poynted like a range of pikes
      Ranck't on his backe: his foame ſnowes where he feeds
      His tuskes are like the Indian Oliphants.1613, Thomas Heywood, The Brazen Age, […], London: […] Nicholas Okes, […], →OCLC, Act II, signature [C4], verso
  2. An ancient ivory hunting-horn.

Proper noun capitalized: Oliphant

Oliphant

  1. A surname.

Forms of oliphant

pluraloliphants
alternative formolifant
alternative formolyfaunte
alternative formolyphant
alternative formoliphaunt

Origin of oliphant

From Middle English olifaunt, from Anglo-Norman oliphant (“ivory, elephant”) and Old French oliphant (“ivory, elephant, musical horn of ivory”), from Latin elephantus (“elephant”), from Ancient Greek ἐλέφας (eléphas, “ivory, elephant”).

Words formed from oliphant

Questions about oliphant

What does oliphant mean?
Oliphant means an elephant.
What part of speech is oliphant?
Oliphant can be a noun or a proper noun.
What is the plural of oliphant?
The plural of oliphant is oliphants.

Words near oliphant in the dictionary

  1. olio drops
  2. olioastrocytoma
  3. oliodendroglioma
  4. oliogonucleotide
  5. olios
  6. oliphant
  7. Oliphantian
  8. oliphants
  9. oliphaunt
  10. oliphaunts
  11. olisboi

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: oliphant (page history and authors); Oliphant (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: “oliphant.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/oliphant. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.