Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A large carnivorous theropod dinosaur of the genus Megalosaurus of the Jurassic Period, having a large head and short forelimbs. Megalosaurus was the first dinosaur given a scientific name (1824).

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A genus of dinosaurian reptiles, typical of the family Megalosauridæ, established by Buckland upon remains indicating a gigantic terrestrial reptile of carnivorous habits. The size has been variously estimated at from 30 to 40 and even 50 feet in length. The femur and tibia were each about 3 feet long. The remains of megalosaurs have been found in abundance in the Oölite.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun gigantic carnivorous bipedal dinosaur of the Jurassic or early Cretaceous in Europe

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[New Latin Megalosaurus, genus name : megalo– + Greek sauros, lizard.]

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Examples

  • Get through that London, Michaelmas Term lately over, and the Lord's Chancellor sitting in the mud on the streets with a megalosaurus creeping up on him or something and see how far I get with this year's Dickens of a Read.

    Let Christmas begin. 2007

  • Get through that London, Michaelmas Term lately over, and the Lord's Chancellor sitting in the mud on the streets with a megalosaurus creeping up on him or something and see how far I get with this year's Dickens of a Read.

    44 entries from December 2007 2007

  • Get through that London, Michaelmas Term lately over, and the Lord's Chancellor sitting in the mud on the streets with a megalosaurus creeping up on him or something and see how far I get with this year's Dickens of a Read.

    Let Christmas begin. 2007

  • Earl is a cigar-chomping, blue-collar megalosaurus, and he's just been canned from his job as a tree pusher for the Wesayson Development Corp.

    A Megalosaurus Hit? 2008

  • For Disney, "Dinosaures" offers untold millions in merchandising opportunities, though its hard to imagine a smoking, cussing megalosaurus adorning lunch boxes or escorting Snow White in the Rose Bowl Parade.

    A Megalosaurus Hit? 2008

  • And this is the London to which Marx moved in 1849, the London of Dickens and the London of pea soup of fogs and mud and chaos and in which you might find a megalosaurus.

    Karl Marx: A Life 2000

  • He has this wonderful picture of London in the fog and the mud and the wet and everything, and he says, you know, ` So much fog and there's so much appearing that it would not be a wonder if a megalosaurus were seen walking along Hobin Hill because it seemed almost primeval, the swamplike nature of London. '

    Karl Marx: A Life 2000

  • As against the historical traditions of man's mastery, she does well to urge that creation is progressive, and that the megalosaurus was master even before man.

    The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 Various

  • Sir, -- show me any other place that is, or was since the megalosaurus has died out, where wealth and social influence are so fairly divided between the stationary and the progressive classes!

    The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 03, No. 18, April, 1859 Various

  • He has not a scientific mind, and he gives but few data; yet I can bring before myself very easily all the scenes which he describes, particularly that one in which the megalosaurus approaches, and he rushes to mount the dinoris so as to escape.

    A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder James De Mille

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