Crossword clues for giraffe
giraffe
- Tactless remark describing Kirk essentially as an animal
- African mammal
- Tall grazer
- Tall animal
- Long-necked mammal
- He can hold his head high
- Treetop grazer
- Tall mammal
- Africa's tallest creature
- Word from the Arabic for "fast walker"
- Toys "R" Us mascot
- The largest ruminant
- Tallest mammal
- Tallest land quadruped
- Tall leaf-eater
- One with a great view at the zoo?
- One spotted in Africa
- Okapi's cousin
- Okapi cousin
- Long-necked African mammal
- Largest ruminant
- It's hard to miss at the zoo
- One with a great view of a zoo?
- Treetop nibbler
- Of savannahs of tropical Africa
- Tallest living quadruped
- Having a spotted coat and small horns and very long neck and legs
- Zoo attraction
- Zoo skyscraper
- Tallest quadruped
- The constellation Camelopardalis
- Tall veldt grazer
- Camelopard
- Mistake to capture one river animal
- Mistake if Ireland abandons this African native
- Long-necked animal
- Long-necked creature
- Large African mammal
- Boss detailed to catch Irish animal
- Blunder trapping small Irish mammal
- The Spanish sovereign defeated contender
- Tallest extant quadruped
- Tallest land animal
- Tall quadruped
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
giraffe \gi*raffe"\ (j[i^]*r[a^]f"; 277), n. [F. girafe, Sp. girafa, from Ar. zur[=a]fa, zar[=a]fa.] (Zo["o]l.) An African ruminant ( Giraffa camelopardalis formerly Camelopardalis giraffa) related to the deers and antelopes, but placed in a family ( Giraffidae) by itself; the camelopard. It is the tallest of quadriped animals, being sometimes twenty feet from the hoofs to the top of the head. Its neck is very long, and its fore legs are much longer than its hind legs. There are three types, having different patterns of spots on the pelt and different territories: the Reticulated Giraffe, the Masai Giraffe, and the Uganda Giraffe. Intermediate crosses are also observed.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1590s, giraffa, from Italian giraffa, from Arabic zarafa, probably from an African language. Earlier Middle English spellings varied wildly, depending on the source, including jarraf, ziraph, and gerfauntz, some apparently directly from Arabic, the last reflecting some confusion with olifaunt "elephant."\n\nIn Arabye, þei ben clept Gerfauntz; þat is a best pomelee or spotted .. but a lityll more high þan is a stede, But he hath the necke a xxti cubytes long. [Mandeville's Travels, c.1425] \n\nThe modern form of the English word is attested by c.1600 and is via French girafe. Replaced earlier camelopard, a compound of camel (for the long neck) and pard (n.1) "leopard" (for the spots).
Wiktionary
n. 1 A ruminant, of the genus ''Giraffa'', of the African savannah with long legs and highly elongated neck, which make it the tallest living animal; yellow fur patterned with dark spots, often in the form of a network; and two or more short, skin-covered horns. 2 (context Cockney rhyming slang English) A laugh.
WordNet
n. tallest living quadruped; having a spotted coat and small horns and very long neck and legs; of savannahs of tropical Africa [syn: camelopard, Giraffa camelopardalis]
Wikipedia
The giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis) is an African even-toed ungulate mammal, the tallest living terrestrial animal and the largest ruminant. Its species name refers to its camel-like shape and its leopard-like colouring. Its chief distinguishing characteristics are its extremely long neck and legs, its horn-like ossicones, and its distinctive coat patterns. It is classified under the family Giraffidae, along with its closest extant relative, the okapi. The nine subspecies are distinguished by their coat patterns.
The giraffe's scattered range extends from Chad in the north to South Africa in the south, and from Niger in the west to Somalia in the east. Giraffes usually inhabit savannahs, grasslands, and open woodlands. Their primary food source is acacia leaves, which they browse at heights most other herbivores cannot reach. Giraffes are preyed on by lions; their young are also targeted by leopards, spotted hyenas, and African wild dogs. Giraffe are gregarious and may gather in large aggregations. Males establish social hierarchies through "necking", which are combat bouts where the neck is used as a weapon. Dominant males gain mating access to females, which bear the sole responsibility for raising the young.
The giraffe has intrigued various cultures, both ancient and modern, for its peculiar appearance, and has often been featured in paintings, books, and cartoons. It is classified by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as Least Concern, but has been extirpated from many parts of its former range, and three subspecies are classified as Endangered. Nevertheless, giraffes are still found in numerous national parks and game reserves.
Giraffe is the third full-length album by British musician Richard Warren, released under his pseudonym, Echoboy. It was released on February 10, 2003 on Mute Records in the United Kingdom and on February 25 of that year in the United States. It was produced by Flood.
Giraffe is a critically acclaimed debut novel by Scottish writer J. M. Ledgard.
Giraffe is based on a true Czechoslovakian story, which Ledgard discovered while working as a journalist in the Czech Republic for The Economist in 2001. In 1975, on the eve of May Day, Czechoslovakian secret police dressed in chemical warfare suits sealed off the zoo in the small Czech town of Dvůr Králové nad Labem and orchestrated the slaying of the zoo's entire population of forty-nine giraffes - the largest captive herd in the world. No reason for the action was ever given, and discussion of the incident was suppressed. It remains a state secret in the Czech Republic. Ledgard recounts the story of the giraffes from their capture in Africa to their deaths far away in the Eastern Bloc.
Giraffe was published in 2006 by Penguin Press in the United States, Jonathan Cape in Britain, and Héloïse d'Ormesson in France. Czech, Dutch, and English-language paperback editions appeared in 2007. While some reviewers found Giraffe stilted and sombre, the majority praised it as a masterpiece. The novel was named a 2006 Book of the Year by the Library Journal, and as a novel of the year by newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic.
The Library Journal found Giraffe to be "a profoundly affecting novel that will wake you up and break your heart." The reviewer for the United Kingdom's The Independent described it as a "superb novel, filled with compassion, yet never sentimental." The Chicago Tribune critic likened Giraffe to T. S. Eliot's The Wasteland, while the review in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution thought Ledgard's prose closer to that of Italo Calvino. Other reviews drew comparison with the German writer, W. G. Sebald. The reviewer from The Plain Dealer argued that Giraffe is "a potent, disturbing dream, as if Radiohead's ' Idioteque' had mixed with something by Haruki Murakami." The New York Times critic was "continually reminded of Harold Bloom's remark about all great books being strange."
According to one of the novel's publishers, Penguin Press, "Giraffe marks the debut of an unforgettable talent.... At once vivid and unearthly, Giraffe is a meditation on suffering, on the strangeness of vertical creatures, and on the inhabitants of a middling totalitarian state, sleepwalking through the ‘ communist moment’."
The giraffe is a long-necked ruminant of the African savannah, the tallest living land animal.
Giraffe or Giraffes may also refer to:
- Giraffe (novel), a novel by J. M. Ledgard
- USS Giraffe (IX-118)
- GIRAFFE Radar, a family of radar-based air defense and surveillance systems
- Giraffe Restaurants, a United Kingdom restaurant and cafe chain
- Camelopardalis or the Giraffe, a constellation
- Giraffe (album), an album by Echoboy
- The Giraffe, the English title of the German film Meschugge
- Giraffe, a fairy chess piece
Usage examples of "giraffe".
They gave my bobtail coat to somebody else, and sent me an ulster suitable for a giraffe.
Like runaway construction cranes, giraffe clans loped along above great herds of gemsbok and blue wildebeest.
As yesterday, the sand and soft earth are covered with the footmarks of gazelles, ostriches, the habara, and even the giraffe.
Foppl stood holding a sjambok or cattle whip of giraffe hide, tapping the handle against his leg in a steady, syncopated figure.
Giraffe was carefully fixing a mattress and pillows on the floor of a wagonette, and presently a man, who looked like a corpse, was carried out and lifted into the trap.
The Giraffe was carefully fixing a mattress and pillows on the floor of a wagonette, and presently a man, who looked like a corpse, was carried out and lifted into the trap.
The size of small dogs with long, trailing tails, these fast, solitary runners, browsing on leaves and fallen fruit, were ancestors of the mighty artiodactyl family, which would one day include pigs, sheep, cattle, reindeer, antelope, giraffes, and camels.
Looking like meaty giraffes, they had long legs, supple necks, and hides like those of elephants.
The animals are chipped, the paint is peeling, the giraffe and elephant are missing hooves and tusks, and the carousel is musicless and graceless.
Well, we think that a time may come when we who live on shrubs like goats may again browse on tree-tops like giraffes, for Panda is no strong king, and he has sons who hate each other, one of whom may need our spears.
Warthogs and waterbuck, a herd of sleek zebras, a giraffe towering out at the jungle edge, a black-maned lion half asleep on a rock, great head lifted to watch the unalarmed game.
We passed birds, bears, apes, monkeys, ungulates, the terrarium house, the rhinos, the elephants, the giraffes.
Their hides were clothing enough, a mottled pattern of golds and rusts that reminded him of something between a diamondback rattlesnake and a reticulated giraffe.
Most of our birds and reptiles, and our lemurs, rhinos, orang-utans, mandrills, lion-tailed macaques, giraffes, anteaters, tigers, leopards, cheetahs, hyenas, zebras, Himalayan and sloth bears, Indian elephants and Nilgiri tahrs, among others, were in demand, but others, Elfie for example, were met with silence.
And not just the big fivethe elephant, rhinoceros, leopard, lion, and cape buffalobut also predators and prey of every ilk: the Nile crocodile, hippo, cheetah, hyena, wildebeest, jackal, giraffe, zebra, waterbuck, kudu, impala, reedbuck, warthog, baboons.