Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A herbivorous marine mammal (Dugong dugon), native to tropical coastal waters of the Indian Ocean, Red Sea, and southwest Pacific Ocean and having flipperlike forelimbs and a notched tail.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A large aquatic herbivorous mammal of the order Sirenia, Halicore dugong, of the Indian seas.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Zoöl.) An aquatic herbivorous mammal (
Halicore dugong ), of the order Sirenia, allied to the manatee, but with a bilobed tail. It inhabits the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, East Indies, and Australia.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A plant-eating aquatic marine
mammal , of the genusDugong , found in tropical regions.Dugong dugon .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun sirenian tusked mammal found from eastern Africa to Australia; the flat tail is bilobate
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Support
Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word dugong.
Examples
-
I know that on the eastern coast of Africa is found a smaller species of walrus called the dugong: it has long incisor teeth, but not tusks; and certainly resembles a seal rather than a walrus.’
-
Blacks harpoon dugong as they do turtle, but the sport demands greater patience and dexterity, for the dugong is a wary animal and shy, to be approached only with the exercise of artful caution.
-
Half hippopotamus, half seal, yet in no way related to either, something between a pachyderm and cetacean, the dugong is a herbivorous marine mammal, commonly known as “the sea cow,” because of its resemblance in some particulars to that useful domesticated animal.
-
The dugong is a shy aquatic mammal sometimes known as the "elephant of the sea".
-
The dugong is a sea mammal found on the north coast of Australia.
Peeps At Many Lands: Australia Frank Fox 1917
-
Half hippopotamus, half seal, yet in no way related to either, something between a pachyderm and cetacean, the dugong is a herbivorous marine mammal, commonly known as "the sea cow," because of its resemblance in some particulars to that useful domesticated animal.
-
Blacks harpoon dugong as they do turtle, but the sport demands greater patience and dexterity, for the dugong is a wary animal and shy, to be approached only with the exercise of artful caution.
-
The resemblance, in the shape of the body and in the fin-like anterior limbs, between the dugong, which is a pachydermatous animal, and the whale, and between both these mammals and fishes, is analogical.
-
The resemblance, in the shape of the body and in the fin-like anterior limbs, between the dugong, which is a pachydermatous animal, and the whale, and between both these mammals and fishes, is analogical.
On the Origin of Species~ Chapter 13 (historical) Charles Darwin 1859
-
He said this in a despairing tone, for the dugong, which is the
The Castaways Mayne Reid 1850
chained_bear commented on the word dugong
"...he was gazing into the large insipid kindly square-nosed face of a dugong... A young female dugong, about eight feet long, with her child. Sometimes she held it to her bosom with her flipper, both of them poised upright in the sea, staring straight before them in a very vacant manner... she showed the utmost solicitude for her child, occasionally going so far as to wash its face, which seemed a pointless task in so limpid a sea. Was her presence, and that of some fellow-mermaidens much farther out, a sign of the coming change of seasons?"
--Patrick O'Brian, The Nutmeg of Consolation, 55
March 6, 2008
Prolagus commented on the word dugong
From a sign in Mammalogy:
... In the event of a fire and you're located in the Mammalogy Department, meet the rest of the staff under the Dugong by the department door ....
I wonder what the janitors would do in case of fire.
"Quick! Look up dugong in the encyclopedia!"
October 14, 2008