tepui
/ˈtɛpwi/
tepui noun: a type of table-top mountain or mesa found in the Guiana Highlands of South America, especially in Venezuela.
Noun
tepui (plural tepuis or tepuies)
- A type of table-top mountain or mesa found in the Guiana Highlands of South America, especially in Venezuela.
- Once a population becomes adapted to the tepui summit environment, it is more likely to colonize other areas with similar environmental conditions, so it would need to disperse between tepui summits to expand its geographical range.2005, P. E. Berry, R. Riina, Insights into the diversity of the Pantepui flora and the biogeographic complexity of the Guayana Shield, Ib Friis, Henrik Balslev (editors), Plant Diversity and...
- One of the most dominant landscape features in the Gran Sabana is a flight of planation surfaces rising from modern sea level to the summits of the high tepui (Briceño and Schubert 1990).2010, Robert A. L. Wray, “Chaper 9: The Gran Sabana”, in Piotr Migoń, editor, Geomorphological Landscapes of the World, Springer, page 82
Forms of tepui
| plural | tepuis |
|---|---|
| plural | tepuies |
| alternative form | tepuy |
Origin of tepui
From Spanish tepuy, from Pemon tüpü (“rocky system, mountain, tepui”), though sometimes erroneously said to be from Pemon tapüi (“house”) in the sense of ‘house of the gods’. Perhaps ultimately related to Proto-Cariban *tôpu (“stone”), though the Pemon etymon is not a direct descendant.
Phrases with tepui
Questions about tepui
- What does tepui mean?
- Tepui means a type of table-top mountain or mesa found in the Guiana Highlands of South America, especially in Venezuela.
- What part of speech is tepui?
- Tepui is a noun.
- How do you pronounce tepui?
- Tepui is pronounced /ˈtɛpwi/.
- What is the plural of tepui?
- The plural of tepui is tepuis.
Words near tepui in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: tepui (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: “tepui.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tepui. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.