Library / English Dictionary

CROCODILE

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 I. (noun) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Large voracious aquatic reptile having a long snout with massive jaws and sharp teeth and a body covered with bony plates; of sluggish tropical waters

Classified under:

Nouns denoting animals

Hypernyms ("crocodile" is a kind of...):

crocodilian; crocodilian reptile (extant archosaurian reptile)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "crocodile"):

African crocodile; Crocodylus niloticus; Nile crocodile (a dangerous crocodile widely distributed in Africa)

Asian crocodile; Crocodylus porosus (estuarine crocodile of eastern Asia and Pacific islands)

Morlett's crocodile (a variety of crocodile)

Holonyms ("crocodile" is a member of...):

Crocodilus; Crocodylus; genus Crocodilus; genus Crocodylus (type genus of the Crocodylidae)

Credits

 Context examples: 

I do not know that I can bring their appearance home to you better than by saying that they looked like monstrous kangaroos, twenty feet in length, and with skins like black crocodiles.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I had been reading to Peggotty about crocodiles.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

We had exhausted the crocodiles, and begun with the alligators, when the garden-bell rang.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

However, we returned to those monsters, with fresh wakefulness on my part, and we left their eggs in the sand for the sun to hatch; and we ran away from them, and baffled them by constantly turning, which they were unable to do quickly, on account of their unwieldy make; and we went into the water after them, as natives, and put sharp pieces of timber down their throats; and in short we ran the whole crocodile gauntlet.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

We were sitting as before, one evening (when my mother was out as before), in company with the stocking and the yard-measure, and the bit of wax, and the box with St. Paul's on the lid, and the crocodile book, when Peggotty, after looking at me several times, and opening her mouth as if she were going to speak, without doing it—which I thought was merely gaping, or I should have been rather alarmed—said coaxingly: Master Davy, how should you like to go along with me and spend a fortnight at my brother's at Yarmouth?

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)