mastodon

• mastodont

First attested 1813, from translingual Mastodon (1806), coined by French naturalist Georges Cuvier, from masto- (“breast”) +‎ -odon (“tooth”), due to the mammilloid (“nipple-shaped”) projections on the crowns of the extinct mammal's molars.

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈmæs.tə.dɒn/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈmæs.tə.dɑn/, /ˈmæs.tə.dən/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -æstədɒn
• Hyphenation: mas‧to‧don

mastodon (plural mastodons)

1. Extinct elephant-like mammal of the genus †Mammut that flourished worldwide from Miocene through Pleistocene times; differs from elephants and mammoths in the form of the molar teeth.

   Synonym: (archaic) incognitum

   • 2014, Elizabeth Kolbert, chapter 2, in The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, Henry Holt and Company:

     When, exactly, Europeans first stumbled upon the bones of an American mastodon is unclear. An isolated molar unearthed in a field in upstate New York was sent off to London in 1705; it was labeled the “tooth of a Giant”.

2. (figurative) Anything awkwardly large or unwieldy.
   • 2017, Nina Laurin, Girl Last Seen:

     The battery is dying, and Natalia's iPhone charger doesn't fit my mastodon of a phone anyway.

   • 2020, Finn Laursen, The Development of the EU as a Sea-Policy Actor:

     Nor does it work for governance: the policy has become such a mastodon that we can't adapt it quickly enough to different regions or different circumstances.

• mastodon on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Mammut on Wikispecies.Wikispecies
• Category:Mammut on Wikimedia Commons.Wikimedia Commons