Citations:mastodonian

English citations of mastodonian

Adjective: "of, related to, or characteristic of a mastodon; large; powerful"

					1859 1877 1880 1892 1897	1917 1919 1921 1923 1937 1977	2005
ME «	15th c.	16th c.	17th c.	18th c.	19th c.	20th c.	21st c.

• 1859, Executive Documents Printed by Order of The House of Representatives during the Second Session of the Thirty-Fifth Congress, 1858-'59, page 503:

  The British parliament is now considering the proposition of a Liverpool ship-builder to build six "mastodonian steamships," to be used for the transportation of troops to distant possessions.

• 1877, Charles T. Congdon, "Of Poetry and Verse-Making", North American Review, March 1877, page 249:

  It is a consolation, as, we recede still further from the antediluvian period, that poems of Mastodonian proportions have become almost unknown.

• 1880, Chartles T. Congdon, Reminiscences of a Journalist, page 95:

  He should have been employed in that kind of mastodonian annotation which swelled the spare remains of Velleius Paterculus into a chubby quarto of a thousand pages.

• 1881, Lawrence Barrett, Edwin Forrest, page 136:

  Of course, all this mastodonian muscularity was a disadvantage in characters of predominating intellect, like Hamlet, with which our actor never meddled without reminding us of a bull in a china-shop.

• 1892, "A Christmas Eve En Route", Life, December 1892, page 12:

  It was not any fear of his mastodonian build, or of his well-known prowess with his fists that kept Fred Lansdale’s slumbers from being disturbed by handfuls of snow down the back of his neck, and similar jocularities on the part of his fellow-passengers.

• 1897, Appolo Belvedere, Evangelica, page 33:

  No, not that sensible chap; instinct is what he hearkens to, so he takes in a big mastodonian breath, puffs himself clean out to the bursting point with a tremendous big 'I will,' picks up that bushel basket, and trots himself off with it in a jiffy.

• 1917, Gardner Teall, "Antique Desks And Their Appreciation", House & Garden, March 1917, page 25:

  Upon first thought, a collection of desks might seem like a mastodonian assemblage; so it would be, if the collector placed them all in a row or all in a single room.

• 1919, Edward Rice Burroughs, The Warlord of Mars, page 115:

  These brutes are huge mastodonian animals that tower to an immense height even beside the giant green men and their giant thoats; but when compared to the relatively small red man and his breed of thoats they assume Brobdingnagian proportions that are truly appalling.

• 1921, Guido M. Gatti, "The Piano Works of Claude Debussy", The Musical Quarterly, June 1921, page 454:

  The effect conveyed is that one portion of the sensitive soul of this shy and timid artist—who hated, as strongly as it is possible to hate, grandiloquent gestures, resounding cries, mastodonian compositions and multiple orchestral phalanxes—must always have remained in hiding when he came to express himself symphonically.

• 1923, "Cinema", Time, 10 September 1923, page 16:

  The colossus (with a mastodonian toothache) is in the same prison.

• 1937, Lona Gill, "Let's Stop The Holiday Gorging!", Los Angeles Times Magazine, 14 November 1937, page 6:

  Since Mother Eve made history by eating too many apples, all peoples in every time have been prone to mark special occasions with Mastodonian meals.

• 1977, Fred J. Smyth, Tales of the Kooteneys, page 194:

  Paul was a man of mastodonian proportions, and lumber camp bunkhouse legend has it that it required sixteen cowhides to make him a pair of boots and he used telegraph poles for toothpicks.

• 2005, Bob Flaherty, Puff, page 40:

  "It's a good thing you got her here when you did, Mr. Wzionkowitz," one of them said as they maneuvered her mastodonian girth through the revolving door.