rhinoceros
/rʌɪˈnɒs(ə)rəs
/noun (plural same or rhinoceroses)
A large, heavily built plant-eating mammal with one or two horns on the nose and thick folded skin, native to Africa and southern Asia. All kinds have become endangered through hunting.
- Family Rhinocerotidae: four genera and five species.
- Rabinowitz hoped to find remaining pockets of additional charismatic fauna - elephants, tigers, and rhinoceroses - and to set up a biological reserve to protect them, but he soon learned that these large mammals had disappeared.
- O'Connell-Rodwell and her colleagues have also begun to study the nuances of elephant signals to distinguish them from the footsteps of rhinoceroses or lions.
Derivatives
rhinocerotic
Origin
Middle English: via Latin from Greek rhinokerōs, from rhis, rhin- 'nose' + keras 'horn'.
It is the look of the rhinoceros that provides its name, which comes from Greek rhino- ‘nose’ and keras ‘horn’. The animal has been known in English since the end of the 14th century, but the first reference to it calls it a kind of unicorn. Rhino- will be familiar to gardeners from the antirrhinum (mid 16th century), the alternative name for the snapdragon, whose name means ‘counterfeiting a nose’ from its appearance, while keras appears in keratin (mid 19th century), the substance from which horn is made.