mastodons

noun

plural of mastodon
as in whales
something or someone that is unusually large and powerful mom-and-pop stores just can't compete with these mastodons of retailing

Synonyms & Similar Words

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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 mastodons For millions of years, Pacific mastodons — huge, hairy relatives of modern elephants — roamed a vast and lush range that included California, Oregon, the northern Rocky Mountains and parts of Mexico. — Los Angeles Times, 10 Sep. 2026 Modern elephants are the only living proboscideans today — a group that once included woolly mammoths and mastodons. — Andrea Margolis, FOXNews.com, 14 Aug. 2026 According to this theory, those now-extinct megafauna—the giant ground sloths and the giant beavers, the mastodons and mammoths, and even the lions and dire wolves—were relatively quickly hunted to extinction. — Literary Hub, 10 June 2026 Other species recovered from the cave, including mastodons and ground sloths, are rare in the region. — Hanna Wickes, Miami Herald, 29 Mar. 2026 Ground sloths and mastodons are linked to forest habitats. — Hanna Wickes, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 29 Mar. 2026
Recent Examples of Synonyms for mastodons
  1. whales
  2. dinosaurs
  3. giants
  4. mammoths
  5. monsters
  6. elephants
Noun
  • For decades, the seabirds have pecked at whales surfacing to breathe, gorging on their skin and blubber.
    — ABC News, ABC News, 2 Oct. 2026
  • The new interpretations of the Endangered Species Act remove some of the legal basis for enforcing rules for noisy seismic surveys, speed limits on vessels and restrictions on shipping routes designed to help protect the whales from harm.
    — Timothy Randhir, The Conversation, 1 Oct. 2026
Definition of whales
Noun
  • Its discovery adds to our understanding of one of the world’s premier fossil deposits and what life in Illinois looked like even before dinosaurs.
    — Laura Baisas, Popular Science, 24 Sep. 2026
  • For the dinosaurs that survived the initial blast, the world became an unforgiving wilderness of starvation and severe climate shifts.
    — Kevin Brown, Forbes.com, 24 Sep. 2026
Definition of dinosaurs
Noun
  • Andersen predicts security concerns will ultimately keep China’s turbine giants from conquering the continent.
    — Sam Birchall, Fortune, 2 Oct. 2026
  • As rural communities across the United States wage intensifying battles to keep AI-computing data centers out of their backyards, some tech giants are mulling methods that could sidestep such local resentment — by sending the facilities to space.
    — Jackie Wattles, CNN Money, 1 Oct. 2026
Definition of giants
Noun
  • In ancient California, they are believed to have existed alongside other extinct native species, including bison-sized Jefferson’s ground sloths, Columbian mammoths and western camels.
    — Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, 10 Sep. 2026
  • 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
Definition of mammoths
Noun
  • They’re rooted in a time and place that feels all too real, and this allows the monsters to parade their primitive might in a way that means something.
    — Owen Gleiberman, Variety, 27 Sep. 2026
  • The poet, Pavese implies, is a creature of Chaos—that anarchic state in which good is mixed with bad and monsters mingle with men and gods.
    — Max Norman, Harpers Magazine, 22 Sep. 2026
Definition of monsters
Noun
  • Yet, some birds can sing louder than animals much bigger than them, such as elephants, lions or bison, which indicates another mechanism is at play that allows birds to be loud that is yet to be discovered, the researchers noted.
    — Amarachi Orie, CNN Money, 29 Sep. 2026
  • The 11,700-square-foot house is part of Thanda Safari, a roughly 40,000-acre private game reserve where elephants, lions, leopards, rhinos, and buffalo roam and giraffes and zebras can sometimes be spotted right from the home.
    — Abby Montanez, Robb Report, 29 Sep. 2026
Definition of elephants

Browse Nearby Words

mastodon
mastodons
masturbatory
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Cite this Entry

“Mastodons.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/mastodons. Accessed 5 Oct. 2026.

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