Word.ws English Dictionary

river horse

river horse noun: hippopotamus.

Noun

river horse (plural river horses)

  1. (uncommon) Hippopotamus.
    • The river-horse feeds upon the herbage of the Nile, and the behemoth is said to eat grass like an ox.1808, Thomas Shaw, Travels Or Observations
    • Liverpool started and snorted like a river-horse roused amongst his reeds by thunder.1849, Currer Bell [pseudonym; Charlotte Brontë], “The Winding-up”, in Shirley. A Tale. […], volume III, London: Smith, Elder and Co., […], →OCLC, page 303

river horse meaning in Tamil

river horse in Tamil

நீர்யானை

Forms of river horse

pluralriver horses

Origin of river horse

Calque of Ancient Greek ἱπποπόταμος (hippopótamos). Compare Middle English water hors (“hippopotamus”). By surface analysis, river + horse.

Questions about river horse

What does river horse mean?
River horse means hippopotamus.
What is river horse in Tamil?
River horse in Tamil is நீர்யானை. See River horse meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is river horse?
River horse is a noun.
What is the plural of river horse?
The plural of river horse is river horses.

Words near river horse in the dictionary

  1. river gum
  2. river gums
  3. River Hebert
  4. river hog
  5. river hogs
  6. river horse
  7. river horses
  8. river island
  9. river islands
  10. river jack
  11. river jacks

Source and license

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