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woolly hippopotamus

woolly hippopotamus noun: a hypothesized extinct relative to the hippopotamus that supposedly lived in northern or western Europe during the Ice Age.

Noun

woolly hippopotamus

  1. A hypothesized extinct relative to the hippopotamus that supposedly lived in northern or western Europe during the Ice Age.
    • Above, the woolly hippopotamus (Hippopotamus Major) of western Europe; below, the southern elephant (Elephas Meridionalis). Remains of both are found in the riverdrifts of France and Spain[…]1925, Lucretia Thatcher Perry Osborn, Chain of Life, page 163
    • Here you will find evidence that over the hills of Craven straight-tusked elephant, slender-nosed rhinoceros, woolly hippopotamus, and ox (Bos Primigenius) once roamed, and ended their days in the Victoria cave, a hyena's den, probably during the tropical period of the Great Inter-Glacial period.1956, Marie Hartley, Joan Ingleby, The Yorkshire Dales, page 87

Questions about woolly hippopotamus

What does woolly hippopotamus mean?
Woolly hippopotamus means a hypothesized extinct relative to the hippopotamus that supposedly lived in northern or western Europe during the Ice Age.
What part of speech is woolly hippopotamus?
Woolly hippopotamus is a noun.

Words near woolly hippopotamus in the dictionary

  1. woolly bears
  2. woolly bluecurls
  3. woolly fringe moss
  4. woolly hat
  5. woolly hats
  6. woolly hippopotamus
  7. woolly lemur
  8. woolly lemurs
  9. woolly mammoth
  10. woolly mammoths
  11. woolly marbles

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: woolly hippopotamus (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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