What does "artiodactyl" mean?

Any ungulate mammal with an even number of toes and belonging to the Artiodactyla, including pigs, sheep, deer, cattle, and most grazing animals. In contrast, horses have an odd number of toes and as such are not Artiodactyla, but Perissodactyla.

Artiodactyl

Q: What is a synonym for "artiodactyl"?

Common synonyms include: even-toed ungulate, artiodactyl mammal, artiodactylous, even toed, even toed ungulate, even-toed.

noun

noun ·5 syllables ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1
Any ungulate mammal with an even number of toes and belonging to the Artiodactyla, including pigs, sheep, deer, cattle, and most grazing animals. In contrast, horses have an odd number of toes and as such are not Artiodactyla, but Perissodactyla.
"I have been unable to find out if these are linked in some way to the 1945 Budapest hippos, with the possibility this would create of a parallel history of Central Europe seen through the endurance of one brave African artiodactyl family."
2
placental mammal having hooves with an even number of functional toes on each foot wordnet

Adjective

1
of or relating to or belonging to mammals of the order Artiodactyla wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms

even-toed ungulate artiodactyl mammal artiodactylous even toed even toed ungulate even-toed

Example

More examples

"The hippopotamus is the heaviest extant artiodactyl."

Etymology

Learned borrowing from translingual Artiodactyla, from Ancient Greek ἄρτιος (ártios, “even”) + δάκτυλος (dáktulos, “finger, toe”).

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.