Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Either of two large African antelopes (Connochaetes gnou or C. taurinus) having a drooping mane and beard, a long tufted tail, and curved horns in both sexes.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun An African animal of the genus Catoblepas (or Connochætes), belonging to the antilopine division of the family Bovidæ; a wildebeest.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Zoöl.) One of two species of large South African antelopes of the genus Catoblephas, having a mane and bushy tail, and curved horns in both sexes.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A large antelope native to Africa having curved horns.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun large African antelope having a head with horns like an ox and a long tufted tail

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Probably from Dutch gnoe, from Xhosa i-ngu, white-tailed gnu, from San !nu, black wildebeest.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Taken from Nama, likely (onomatopoeia) of the grunt-type noise of the gnu.

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word gnu.

Examples

  • A gnu is not really like a dodo … But I think there’s something from dodos in gnus …

    Alice in Wonderland by Peter Ferguson 2007

  • I am trying to build a spreadsheet application to cli, called gnu-oleo.

    LinuxQuestions.org Alexvader 2010

  • I am trying to build a spreadsheet application to cli, called gnu-oleo.

    LinuxQuestions.org Alexvader 2010

  • (sometimes called gnu) which look something like the American buffalo or bison, and hartebeest, stood around in a ring, looking on.

    Theodore Roosevelt Edmund Lester Pearson 1908

  • Or use a different tool to create the tar - I just tried using Ant to create the tar file with longfile = "gnu", and the resulting tar file is readable with both Ant and Winzip.

    general@incubator.apache.org Archives 2010

  • Black wilebeest are the most different of the various African wildebeest antelopes (aka "gnu"), different enough from the many subspecies to be counted as their own species.

    ScienceBlogs Channel : Life Science Greg Laden none@example.com 2010

  • Black wilebeest are the most different of the various African wildebeest antelopes (aka "gnu"), different enough from the many subspecies to be counted as their own species.

    ScienceBlogs Channel : Life Science Greg Laden none@example.com 2010

  • Or use a different tool to create the tar - I just tried using Ant to create the tar file with longfile = "gnu", and the resulting tar file is readable with both Ant and Winzip.

    general@incubator.apache.org Archives 2010

  • "gnu," from a hollow moaning sound to which these creatures sometimes give utterance, and which is represented by the word "gnoo-o-oo."

    Popular Adventure Tales Mayne Reid 1850

  • "gnu," from a hollow moaning sound to which these creatures sometimes give utterance, and which is represented by the word "gnoo-o-oo."

    The Bush Boys History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family Mayne Reid 1850

Comments

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  • GNU is a recursive word, meaning "GNU is Not Unix", coined by Richard Stallman 25 years ago in his initiation of the Free Software Movement

    September 21, 2008

  • Young Ada had a gnu. Oy!

    October 18, 2008

  • Mastroianni & Heart's wordplay

    August 14, 2014