Proboscis
noun, slang ·Moderate ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 An elongated tube from the head or connected to the mouth, of an animal.
"Don Caldwell, editor-in-chief of the site Know Your Meme, namechecks Brr Brr Patapim, “a proboscis monkey that is also a tree”, as one who made it to YouTube."
- 2 a long flexible snout as of an elephant wordnet
- 3 An elongated tube from the head or connected to the mouth, of an animal.; The tubular feeding and sucking organ of certain invertebrates like insects, worms and molluscs.
"Unlike the proboscides of Lower brachyceran lineages, which are continuous with the head capsule and tend to dangle (Matsuda 1965), the proboscides of most cyclorrhaphan species are suspended by a membranous region and divided into three functional parts: the basiproboscis (rostrum), medioproboscis (haustellum), and distiproboscis (labellum), each of which is defined by internal muscles but also shares muscles with the other regions (Graham-Smith 1930; Lall and Davies 1971)."
- 4 the human nose (especially when it is large) wordnet
- 5 An elongated tube from the head or connected to the mouth, of an animal.; The trunk of an elephant.
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- 6 A large or lengthy human nose. humorous, informal, mildly
Example
More examples"Male elephant seals can be easily identified by their large proboscis, which resembles an elephant’s trunk (and is the source of their name)."
Etymology
From Latin proboscis, from Ancient Greek προβοσκίς (proboskís, “elephant's trunk”) literally "means for taking food," from προ- (pro-, “before”) + βόσκω (bóskō, “to nourish, feed”), from the Proto-Indo-European root *gʷeh₃- from which also comes βοτάνη (botánē, “grass, fodder”).
Related phrases
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.