Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • An order of Mammalia having a long flexible proboscis or trunk.
  • A class of corticate protozoans, also called Rhynchoflagellata, represented by the noctilucans.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun plural (Zoöl.) An order of large mammals including the elephants and mastodons.

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

  • noun an order of animals including elephants and mammoths
  • noun in some classifications included in the genus Martynia and hence the two taxonomic names for some of the unicorn plants

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Next the shore were found close beds of Elymus, alternating with carpets of _Halianthus peploides_, and further up a poor, even, gravelly soil, covered with water in spring, on which grew only a slate-like lichen, _Gyrophora proboscidea_, and a few flowering plants, of which _Armeria sibirica_ was the most common.

    The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II Alexander Leslie 1866

  • I now went on shore, found a good deal of surf on the beach till we got on the southern side ... here we landed and the first thing we saw was a number of sea elephants* (* The Phoca proboscidea of Peron.) of an immense size lying asleep on the beach, each of them, Barnes the boatswain's mate told me, would make 8 or 9 barrels of oil; as we rowed down the shore we took them to be bluish rocks.

    The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson With the journal of her first commander Lieutenant James Grant Ida Lee 1904

  • Besides these there are whales, lemurs, and many strange ancestral forms of proboscidea. [

    Darwinism (1889) Alfred Russel Wallace 1868

  • David revealed on BBC Radio Ulster and the Belfast News Letter today that Sheila the proboscidea stayed with his cousin in the evening: "When the head keeper, Dick Foster, left work, Denise took Sheila from her enclosure, walked her a short distance to her house at 278

    Northern Ireland Local News 2009

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