English Explanatory Dictionary

heffalump

English dictionary entry

Meanings

noun
  1. (A child's name for) an elephant.
  2. Something that is elusive.
  3. A clumsy or overweight person.
noun
  1. Alternative letter-case form of heffalump.

Pronunciation

/ˈhɛfəlʌmp/ LL-Q1860 (eng)-I learned some phrases-heffalump.wav /ˈhɛfəˌlʌmp/ /-ˌləmp/

Word forms

heffalump heffalumps

Etymology

Probably a childish mispronunciation of elephant, perhaps influenced by half a lump (as in "I'll have half a lump of sugar in my tea"), coined by the English author Alan Alexander Milne (1882–1956) as the name of an imaginary animal in his book Winnie-the-Pooh (1926). The animal was not described in the book, but the illustrator Ernest Howard Shepard (1879–1976) depicted it as an elephant. Sense 2 (“something which is elusive”) refers to the fact that in Milne’s book the characters Winnie-the-Pooh and Piglet set a trap for, but are unable to capture, a heffalump.

Synonyms

All are derogatory unless otherwise labeled butterball chubbs chubster chunker chunky monkey elephant fat fatfuck fatso fattie fatty fatty bom bom fatty boombalatty fat-ass fatass fat fuck fatshit fussock gorbelly hambeast hamplanet heffalump landwhale lardass lardbucket lardo oinker obeast pig podge porker pudge roly-poly salad dodger swagbelly thunder thighs tubbalard tubba lard tubbo tub of guts tub of lard whale

Antonyms

thin person

Derived words

heffalump trap
This entry uses open data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA/GFDL). Word forms are used for search and are not indexed as separate pages.
Back to search All on H Russian dictionary Dahl dictionary