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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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 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
  • While responding to the incident, crews observed three whales in the area off Fire Island National Seashore.
    — ABC News, ABC News, 8 Oct. 2026
  • The Mokattam Formation in northern Egypt is a thick layer of limestone that has preserved prehistoric marine fossils, including fish, sharks and early whales.
    — Taylor Nicioli, CNN Money, 6 Oct. 2026
Definition of whales
Noun
  • Instead of young dinosaurs, these were actually adult examples of an entirely separate species now known as Nanotyrannus lancensis.
    — Andrew Paul, Popular Science, 15 Oct. 2026
  • The results were compared with the skulls of other two-legged meat-eating dinosaurs, such as tyrannosaurs, spinosaurs and raptors.
    — Archie Clarke, CBS News, 14 Oct. 2026
Definition of dinosaurs
Noun
  • Shapiro emphasized more than once that media giants courting audiences need to think in terms of generations and affinity groups, not the age and gender demos of yore.
    — Leo Barraclough, Variety, 15 Oct. 2026
  • Bumper earnings from bellwether tech giants Anthropic and TSMC did little to assuage a market that has turned bearish on the AI trade, sending stocks plummeting.
    — Prashant Rao, semafor.com, 15 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
  • Next week, find out how monsters, ghouls and slashers can also mean big bucks.
    — Ayesha Rascoe, NPR, 11 Oct. 2026
  • The story begins in 1990, when John Eng, an endocrinologist at the Veterans Administration, isolated a peptide from the venom of Gila monsters, the nearly two-foot-long lizards native to the Southwest.
    — Dr. Bowman Heiden, Fortune, 10 Oct. 2026
Definition of monsters
Noun
  • Along some stretches of highway unused turbine blades line the roadsides like giant, fiberglass elephant tusks.
    — Simone McCarthy, CNN Money, 13 Oct. 2026
  • Colossal is undertaking a similar process in their woolly mammoth project – that involves genetically modifying an Asian elephant.
    — Colleen McKown, CNBC, 10 Oct. 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 17 Oct. 2026.

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