Definition

1. Noun:

   • An extinct elephant species: A very large type of elephant with long, curved tusks and a hairy coat that lived during the Ice Age and is now extinct.

2. Adjective:

   • Enormous, gigantic: Used to describe something of immense size or scale.

Usage Examples

• Noun:

  • Scientists found a perfectly preserved mammoth in the Siberian permafrost.
  • The woolly mammoth is one of the most famous prehistoric creatures.

• Adjective:

  • The company undertook a mammoth task of digitizing all its archives.
  • Cleaning up after the festival was a mammoth effort.

Advanced Usage

• "a mammoth undertaking/task/effort": An idiomatically common phrase to describe a project or job of extraordinary size or difficulty.
  • Rebuilding the city after the earthquake was a mammoth undertaking.

Variants and Related Words

• Mammoth (adj.): Can be used attributively (before a noun) or predicatively (after a linking verb like 'is').
  • Attributive: a mammoth corporation
  • Predicative: The challenge was mammoth.

Synonyms

• Noun: extinct elephant, woolly mammoth, mastodon (a related but distinct genus).
• Adjective: colossal, gigantic, huge, enormous, immense, massive, gargantuan.

Related Idioms

• "A mammoth in the room": A playful variation of "elephant in the room," used humorously to emphasize an obvious problem or issue of huge proportions that everyone is ignoring.
  • The project's massive budget overrun is the mammoth in the room that no one wants to discuss.

Adjective

1. so exceedingly large or extensive as to suggest a giant or mammoth
   • a gigantic redwood
   • gigantic disappointment
   • a mammoth ship
   • a mammoth multinational corporation

Noun

1. any of numerous extinct elephants widely distributed in the Pleistocene; extremely large with hairy coats and long upcurved tusks