Tusk

//ˈtʌsk// name, noun, verb

name, noun, verb ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    One of a pair of elongated pointed teeth that extend outside the mouth of an animal such as walrus, elephant or wild boar, and which continue to grow throughout the animal's life.

    "Until the CITES sales ban, elephant tusks were the 'backbone' of the legal ivory trade."

  2. 2
    A fish, the torsk (Brosme brosme).
  3. 3
    a long pointed tooth specialized for fighting or digging; especially in an elephant or walrus or hog wordnet
  4. 4
    A small projection on a (tusk) tenon.
  5. 5
    a hard smooth ivory colored dentine that makes up most of the tusks of elephants and walruses wordnet
Show 4 more definitions
  1. 6
    A tusk shell.
  2. 7
    A projecting member like a tenon, and serving the same or a similar purpose, but composed of several steps, or offsets, called teeth.
  3. 8
    A sharp point.
  4. 9
    The share of a plough.
Verb
  1. 1
    To dig up using a tusk, as boars do.
  2. 2
    remove the tusks of animals wordnet
  3. 3
    To gore with the tusks.
  4. 4
    stab or pierce with a horn or tusk wordnet
  5. 5
    To bare or gnash the teeth. obsolete
Proper Noun
  1. 1
    A male surname from Kashubian

Synonyms

All synonyms
hornbaby toothbicuspidbucktoothcaninecrown

Example

More examples

"By seeing an elephant's tusk you know it is larger than a bull; by seeing a tiger's tail you know it is larger than a fox; by seeing one thing, you know many of them."

Etymology

Etymology 1

From Middle English tusk (also tux, tusch), from Old English tūx, tūsc (“canine tooth, tusk, molar”), from Proto-West Germanic *tų̄sk, *tunsk, from Proto-Germanic *tunþskaz (“canine tooth”), extended form of *tanþs (“tooth”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₃dónts (“tooth”). Cognate with Saterland Frisian Tusk (“tooth”), West Frisian tosk (“tooth”), Icelandic toskur (“a tusk, tooth”) (whence the Old Norse and Icelandic Ratatoskr and Ratatoskur respectively), Gothic 𐍄𐌿𐌽𐌸𐌿𐍃 (tunþus, “tooth”) and *𐍄𐌿𐌽𐌳𐌹 (*tundi, “thorn, tooth”). Doublet of tush. More at tooth.

Etymology 2

Borrowed from Polish Tusk, from Kashubian Tuzk, a variant of Tuzek.

Related phrases

milk tuskanimal toothbig toothdig upelephant barbselephant faceelephant fangelephant featureelephant hornelephant hornselephant ivoryelephant mouth

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