TAPIR

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does tapir mean? 

• TAPIR (noun)
  The noun TAPIR has 1 sense:

1. large inoffensive chiefly nocturnal ungulate of tropical America and southeast Asia having a heavy body and fleshy snout

  Familiarity information: TAPIR used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• TAPIR (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Large inoffensive chiefly nocturnal ungulate of tropical America and southeast Asia having a heavy body and fleshy snout

Classified under:

Nouns denoting animals

Hypernyms ("tapir" is a kind of...):

odd-toed ungulate; perissodactyl; perissodactyl mammal (placental mammals having hooves with an odd number of toes on each foot)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "tapir"):

New World tapir; Tapirus terrestris (a tapir found in South America and Central America)

Indian tapir; Malayan tapir; Tapirus indicus (a tapir found in Malaya and Sumatra)

Holonyms ("tapir" is a member of...):

genus Tapirus; Tapirus (type genus of the Tapiridae)

 Context examples 

"Well," I interrupted, "any large South American animal—a tapir, for example."

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The taxonomic order of mammals that includes odd-toed ungulates such as horses, zebras, tapirs, and rhinoceroses.

(Perissodactyla, NCI Thesaurus)

This is not a conceivable bone either of a tapir or of any other creature known to zoology.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Thus we find such modern creatures as the tapir—an animal with quite a respectable length of pedigree—the great deer, and the ant-eater in the companionship of reptilian forms of jurassic type.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Once a dark, clumsy tapir stared at us from a gap in the bushes, and then lumbered away through the forest; once, too, the yellow, sinuous form of a great puma whisked amid the brushwood, and its green, baleful eyes glared hatred at us over its tawny shoulder.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)