What does "tapir" mean?

An odd-toed ungulate of the genus Tapirus with a long prehensile upper lip.

What is a synonym for "tapir"?

Common synonyms include: animal, antelope, armadillo, bat, bush cow, elephant.

Pronounced //ˈteɪpiːə(ɹ)//.

//ˈteɪpiːə(ɹ)// noun

noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Noun

1
An odd-toed ungulate of the genus Tapirus with a long prehensile upper lip.
"Once a dark, clumsy tapir stared at us from a gap in the bushes, and then lumbered away through the forest; once, too, the yellow, sinuous form of a great puma whisked amid the brushwood, and its green, baleful eyes glared hatred at us over its tawny shoulder."
2
large inoffensive chiefly nocturnal ungulate of tropical America and southeast Asia having a heavy body and fleshy snout wordnet

"A tapir is a mammal with prehensile lips for eating tree foliage."

Borrowed from French tapir, from Old Tupi tapi'ira.

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