elephants

noun

variants also elephant
plural of elephant
as in whales
something or someone that is unusually large and powerful by any standard, the new shopping mall will be an elephant and one that is certain to alter the retail landscape

Synonyms & Similar Words

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Antonyms & Near Antonyms

Example Sentences

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
Recent Examples of elephants Bringing lions, elephants, bears or crocodiles to Rome from the furthest reaches of the Empire was a way of displaying the extent of the world Rome had conquered. — Roberto Prieto, Variety, 8 Sep. 2026 At 80, Steinem celebrated her birthday by riding an elephant in Botswana. — Los Angeles Times, 3 Sep. 2026 King drops elephants through the air, erects wobbly Towers of Babel, lets characters run amok with depictions of her own pencils, and then summons a hand with a knife to clear a clean space on the page. — Laura Preston, New Yorker, 30 Aug. 2026 Other inspirations for the project include the Giant Pink Sea Snail from Doctor Dolittle, giant mechanical elephant puppets by Royal de Luxe and Jules Verne’s imaginative creations. — Jim Dobson, Forbes.com, 29 Aug. 2026 The famed Big 5 (elephants, buffalos, leopards, rhinos, and lions) are all easily spotted in these lands, but the diverse habitats provide opportunities for different behavioral sightings, from feeding to bathing and mating. — Paul Jebara, Condé Nast Traveler, 27 Aug. 2026 The colorful new benches are shaped like animals — elephants, gorillas. — Adam Harrington, CBS News, 27 Aug. 2026 Animals like an elephant, rhino or a giraffe, can't fit in a CT scanner, or even a van, so vets bring the check up to them. — Maddie Rhodes, USA Today, 25 Aug. 2026 Discworld is a flat earth balanced on the backs of four elephants, which are in turn standing on an enormous turtle, Great A’Tuin. — Carline Tromp, The Dial, 18 Aug. 2026
Recent Examples of Synonyms for elephants
  1. whales
  2. dinosaurs
  3. giants
  4. mammoths
  5. monsters
Noun
  • Each summer, thousands of beluga whales migrate to the mouth of the Churchill River, to feed on small fish and nurse their young.
    — The Week UK, TheWeek, 6 Sep. 2026
  • The underwater drone, tethered to the ship with cables and about the size of a small car, was just above the ocean floor as the researchers and pilots searched for furrows potentially left by whales.
    — Fedor Zarkhin, Los Angeles Times, 5 Sep. 2026
Definition of whales
Noun
  • When a massive asteroid impact triggered a global extinction 66 million years ago, almost all dinosaurs and early bird lineages died out.
    — Mrigakshi Dixit, Interesting Engineering, 10 Sep. 2026
  • The feather dates back to the late Cretaceous, right before the great extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs and a large swath of other species.
    — Ari Daniel, NPR, 10 Sep. 2026
Definition of dinosaurs
Noun
  • The sector includes some of the tech giants most sensitive to interest rates, because of the hundreds of billions being borrowed to build AI data centers.
    — Steve Kopack, NBC news, 10 Sep. 2026
  • With the rise of domestic e-commerce giants like Taobao and Pinduoduo, Zhu’s team has moved from solely operating brick-and-mortar stores, to building a strong omnichannel network.
    — Angelica Ang, Fortune, 10 Sep. 2026
Definition of giants
Noun
  • See fossils of the 14-foot, 20,000-pound mammoths that used to roam around Texas.
    — Ella Gonzales, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 3 Sep. 2026
  • The site preserves the remains of Columbian mammoths and offers a look at Ice Age life in Texas.
    — Brandi D. Addison, USA Today, 17 Aug. 2026
Definition of mammoths
Noun
  • Their first game was Crawl, a dungeon-crawler game where your friends control the monsters.
    — Justin Kroll, Deadline, 2 Sep. 2026
  • There will be no B-movie monsters wearing terrible prosthetics, no scripts full of non sequiturs, no glitchy graphics.
    — Becca Rothfeld, New Yorker, 29 Aug. 2026
Definition of monsters

Browse Nearby Words

elephantine
elephants
elevate
See all Nearby Words

Cite this Entry

“Elephants.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/elephants. Accessed 14 Sep. 2026.

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