Dictionary

river horse en · NOUN

Etymology

Calque of Ancient Greek ἱπποπόταμος (hippopótamos). Compare Middle English water hors (“hippopotamus”). By surface analysis, river + horse.

Meanings

1. (uncommon) Hippopotamus.
   • The river-horse feeds upon the herbage of the Nile, and the behemoth is said to eat grass like an ox. 1808, Thomas Shaw, Travels Or Observations:
   • Liverpool started and snorted like a river-horse roused amongst his reeds by thunder. 1849, Currer Bell [pseudonym; Charlotte Brontë], “The Winding-up”, in Shirley. A Tale. […], volume III, London: Smith, Elder and Co., […], →OCLC, page 303:
   • It is out of the idolatrous dotings of the old Egyptians upon broiled ibis and roasted river horse, that you see the mummies of those creatures in their huge bake-houses the pyramids. 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “Loomings”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC, page 4:
   • Here, before a feast that would prick the dead with appetite, were shapes of beasts with heads of men, asses, elephants, bulls, horses, swine, foxes, riverhorses, dromedaries; […] 1909, George Meredith, The Palace of Aklis:

Forms