saber-toothed tiger
4
7.7
- noun
- /ˈseɪbərˌtuːt θaɪɡər/
- US
:
tigre dientes de sable
- Fossils of the saber-toothed tiger provide valuable insights into the evolution of large cats.
- mastodons and saber-toothed tigers
- mammoths and saber-toothed tigers
And drag home the Saber toothed tiger to eat.
- And drag home the Saber toothed tiger to eat.
- You wouldn't see the oncoming Sabre toothed tiger and you wouldn't live to procreate your genes.
- They Saber toothed tigers, Mastodon's mammoths.
- But if avoiding A Saber toothed tiger or like I, I, I managed to make a new spear today.
Examples
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Thirty-six species, including the mastodon, mammoth, and saber-toothed tiger, went extinct.
Blog text (20) -
At the same time, a number of large animal species, such as mammoths and saber-toothed tigers, became extinct.
Academic text (2011) -
And for example, some people incorrectly believe that the T-Rex and the saber-toothed tiger were alive during the same era.
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The tribe's totem is a living thing: the saber-toothed tiger is three times the size of its Bengal cousin, a head the size of an ox, and two ten-inch teeth curved down either side of its jaw.
Fiction book (1996) -
The saber-toothed tiger was one of the most formidable predators of prehistoric North America.
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Scientists believe that saber-toothed tigers primarily hunted large herbivores during the Pleistocene epoch.
Synonyms
1
9.4
A large extinct cat with very long upper front teeth
A large extinct saber-toothed cat that lived in the Americas
Surface Forms
Morphology
saber-toothed + tiger
The phrase is compositionally built: 'saber-toothed' describes an animal having long, saber-like (long curved) teeth and 'tiger' names the animal, so the overall meaning ('a tiger with long canine teeth') is directly derivable from the parts. This is a predictable, descriptive compound found cross-linguistically (e.g. 'dientes de sable' in Spanish), so a B1 learner who knows the constituent words would readily understand it.
Etymology
Saber-toothed tiger: The name saber-toothed tiger comes from the animal's very long, curved upper teeth that look like a saber, and people called it a 'tiger' because it was a large wild cat. So today the phrase means a large, now 'extinct' cat famous for its saber-like teeth.