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tusk

tusk

22 1.5
A long pointed tooth that grows from animals like elephants or walruses used for digging and fighting
  • noun
  • /tʌsk/
: colmillo
  • Including the one with the boar tusks.
  • elephant tusks
  • ivory tusks
  • large tusks

For years and years and years they were exporting mammoth tusks, ivory, right?

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Examples

  • I've never seen one with a tusk that made two curves.

    Fiction book (2000)
  • Yours has the tusks on it.

  • I did get one of his tusks, though.

  • He gave me her tusk.

  • Twice, crying, I showed Mathu the bloody tusk of an elephant.

    Fiction book (1994)
  • To reach it, the elephants have dug wells with their feet and tusks.

  • She's an enormous beast, with great scaly feet and the most prominent pair of tusks I've ever seen.

  • Upward from its lower jaw sprang two tusks the size of a man's forearm, white and gleaming in the sun.

    Fiction book (1990)
  • Long trunks curled around each other, tusks intertwined, humped shoulders flowing into shaggy backs.

    Fiction book (2000)
  • While walking through the savanna, we spotted an elephant with long ivory tusks gleaming in the sunlight.

Synonyms

tush
vstusk
  • Archaic
9.3

A long pointed tooth on animals like boars or elephants

has identical meaning but is the alternative common spelling

Compounds

9.9

A plant with large pale flowers and a long curved beak-like seed pod

tusk shell
  • Specialized
9.9

A small sea animal with a long tube-shaped shell open at both ends

How Long

tusk
22 1.5
fang
47 2.9
tooth
∞ 1.0

Surface Forms

tusk singular
tusks plural

Etymology

Tusk comes from an old Norse word that meant a 'tooth' or 'long tooth', so it helps to think of a tusk as a very long tooth that animals use like a tool or a weapon.