giant tortoise
1
4.2
- noun
- /ˈdʒaɪənt ˈtɔːr.təs/
:
tortuga gigante
- The giant tortoise is famous for its incredible longevity, living for over a hundred years in the wild.
- find giant tortoises
Examples
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"These giant tortoises are of crucial importance to the ecosystems of the Galapagos Islands, and the reintroduction of these species will help preserve their evolutionary legacy," said Danielle Edwards.
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Scientists do not believe ocean currents could have carried giant tortoises to Isabella Island.
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"The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise," she says.
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The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.
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- Oh, last year was my adventure to the Galapagos islands to study the habitat of the giant tortoises.
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Charles Darwin brought the giant tortoise from the Galapagos.
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When the giant tortoise Lonesome George died this summer, conservationists from around the world mourned the extinction of his species.
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A team from Yale University spent the summer collecting DNA samples from more than 1,600 giant tortoises on a remote island in the Galapagos.
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They note that Volcano Wolf is next to Banks Bay, where in the 19th century sailors of naval and whaling vessels discarded giant tortoises collected from other islands when they were no longer needed for food.
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When visiting the Galapagos Islands, you can see a giant tortoise slowly making its way across the landscape.
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a very large tortoise' is directly and transparently derived from combining 'giant' (very large) with 'tortoise' (a land reptile with a shell). This adjective+noun composition is literal and cross-linguistically common, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents will readily infer the MWE's meaning.
Etymology
Giant tortoise is a name early sailors used when they saw very large land tortoises on islands like the Galapagos and Seychelles. The name joins giant (very large) and tortoise (the animal), so it means 'a very large tortoise' that often lives a very long time.