Quagga

//ˈkwaxə// noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A southern-African subspecies of plains zebra, Equus quagga quagga, which went extinct in 1883. The upper parts of the animal were reddish brown, becoming paler behind and beneath, while the face, neck, and fore part of the body were marked by dark stripes.

    "I saw a rhinoceros, buffalo (a large herd), eland, quagga, and sable antelope, the most beautiful of all the bucks, not to mention many smaller varieties of game, and three ostriches which scudded away at our approach like white drift before a gale."

  2. 2
    mammal of South Africa that resembled a zebra; extinct since late 19th century wordnet
  3. 3
    Ellipsis of quagga mussel. abbreviation, alt-of, ellipsis

Synonyms

All synonyms
equus quagga

Example

More examples

"I saw a rhinoceros, buffalo (a large herd), eland, quagga, and sable antelope, the most beautiful of all the bucks, not to mention many smaller varieties of game, and three ostriches which scudded away at our approach like white drift before a gale."

Etymology

From Dutch quagga (whence also Afrikaans kwagga), from a Khoisan term, probably Haiǁom, Khoekhoe ǁkoaah, apparently of imitative origin.

Related phrases

quagga mussel

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