tigers

Noun

tiger (plural tigers)

1. Panthera tigris, a large predatory mammal of the cat family, indigenous to Asia.
   • For with ſuch puiſſance and impetuous maine / Thoſe Champions broke on them, that forſt the fly, / Like ſcattered Sheepe, whenas the Shepherds ſwaine / A Lyon and a Tigre doth eſpye, / With greedy pace forth ruſhing from the foreſt nye.1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto IX”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 14, page 311
   1. A male tiger; as opposed to a tigress.
      • Coordinate term: tigress
2. (inexact) A sabre-toothed tiger (any felid in the subfamily †Machairodontinae).
3. (inexact) A Tasmanian tiger, †Thylacinus cynocephalus
   • What you mean is that no scientist has captured one and been able to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that it exists, which is probably very good news for the tiger.2010, Barry Jonsberg, Blacky Blasts Back: On the Tail of the Tassie Tiger, Crows Nest, N.S.W: Allen & Unwin, page 43
4. (obsolete) A jaguar.
   • Similar is the test among the Moxos of Peru. One of their totems is the tiger; and a candidate for the rank of medicine-man must prove his kinship to the tiger by being bitten by that animal and surviving the bite.1887, James George Frazer, Totemism, page 20
5. A tiger moth in the family Arctiidae.

See all 22 meanings of tiger