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# elephant

«elephant» in Mova's school dictionary: **a very large grey animal with a long trunk, big ears and…** — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 5 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

### part of speech

noun (an elephant, elephants)

### meaning for a pupil

1) An elephant is a very large grey animal with a long trunk, big ears and usually tusks; it lives in Africa and Asia. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/E/elephant/#m1)

2) «The elephant in the room» is a big problem everyone knows about but nobody talks about. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/E/elephant/#m2)

### sense in the lessons

In science lessons elephants are mammals and herbivores; the African elephant is the largest land animal. In maths word problems elephants show big weights: an adult elephant can weigh about 6 tonnes. In stories and sayings: «an elephant never forgets». Phrases: the elephant in the room, white elephant (a costly, useless thing).

### examples

- The elephant sprayed water with its trunk. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/E/elephant/#x1)
- African elephants have bigger ears than Asian elephants. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/E/elephant/#x2)
- An elephant eats plants all day. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/E/elephant/#x3)
- Baby elephants stay close to their mothers. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/E/elephant/#x4)
- The elephant weighs as much as five cars. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/E/elephant/#x5)
- Nobody mentioned the broken window — it was the elephant in the room. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/E/elephant/#x6)
- There are 3 elephants and each eats 150 kg of food a day. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/E/elephant/#x7)

### note

Countable; «an elephant» because it starts with a vowel sound. A young elephant is a calf; a group is a herd. Spelling: -ph- sounds like f. Myth: elephants are afraid of mice — no real evidence.

### In the corpora

- [The trunk is the elephant's nose and upper lip joined together and grown very long.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/21-elephants-the-trunk/5/)
- [Elephants can swim and use the trunk as a snorkel, keeping only its tip above the water.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/21-elephants-the-trunk/10/)
- [Elephants have a superb sense of smell and more smell genes than dogs, and lift the trunk to catch scents on the wind.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/21-elephants-the-trunk/11/)
- [Elephants greet and comfort each other by touching faces and twisting their trunks together.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/21-elephants-the-trunk/12/)
- [Elephants may jump at small sudden things, but the story that they are specially afraid of mice is a myth.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/21-elephants-the-trunk/15/)

### Trees and pragmatics

[Every meaning and example of «elephant» parsed by Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/E/elephant/), each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.