false saber-toothed tiger
- noun
- US
:
falso tigre de dientes de sable
- The false saber-toothed tiger was less specialized than its famous relative, the Smilodon.
Examples
-
Paleontologists study the false saber-toothed tiger to understand early feline evolution.
-
Fossils of the false saber-toothed tiger have been found throughout North America.
-
The false saber-toothed tiger lived millions of years ago.
-
Did you know the false saber-toothed tigers were not as specialized as true saber-tooths?
-
Fossils of the false saber-toothed tiger have been found throughout North America.
-
Paleontologists study the false saber-toothed tiger to understand early feline evolution.
-
The false saber-toothed tiger was less specialized than true saber-toothed cats.
Synonyms
An animal from long ago that eats meat and has very long front teeth
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase is fully compositional: 'false' (not genuine) modifies 'saber-toothed tiger' so the meaning is literally 'a tiger-like animal that resembles a saber-toothed tiger but is not a true one.' Even if a learner hasn't seen the compound 'saber-toothed', its parts are transparent (having saber-like teeth + tiger) and the 'false X' pattern is common cross-linguistically, so a B1 learner who knows the constituents can infer the meaning.
Etymology
False saber-toothed tiger gets its name from how it looked: it had long, curved upper teeth like a saber-toothed tiger, but it was a different, older kind of cat, so people put false to show it was 'not the same'. That's why the name means 'a cat that looks like a saber-toothed tiger but is a different extinct animal'.
