hippopotamusses

English

Noun

hippopotamusses

1. rare spelling of hippopotamuses, the plural of hippopotamus
   • 1825, The British Review, and London Critical Journal, volume XXIII, London: printed for L. B. Seeley and Son, “Geological Antiquities”, page 560:

     Of these caves the work before us contains several remarkable details, particularly of one at Kirkdale in Yorkshire, where the bones of hyænas, tigers, bears, wolves, foxes, weasels, elephants, rhinocerosses, hippopotamusses, horses, oxen, deer, hares, rabbits, rats, mice, ravens, pigeons, and other birds were found, indiscriminately dispersed in a sediment of loam, all bearing the trace of having been gnawed, with marks, corresponding to those of hyænas’ teeth, those parts of bones only being left, which hyænas are observed to spare, and the very excrement of these ferocious animals being detected among other remains, dispersed in the mud.

   • 1923, Arnold Gesell, Julia Wade Abbot, The Kindergarten and Health, number 14, Washington, D. C.: Department of the Interior Bureau of Education, “Part II.—Health Education in the Kindergarten (by Julia Wade Abbot)”, “Learning Through Doing”, “Gardening and Care of Pets”, page 27:

     When the moth came out of the cocoon, the children began to talk of things that changed into something else. “Caterpillars change into moths,” was followed by “puppies change into dogs, and kittens change into cats, and baby hippopotamusses change into big hippopotamusses.”

   • 1987, G. A. Ellenbroek, Ecology and Productivity of an African Wetland System: The Kafue Flats, Zambia, Dr W. Junk Publishers, →ISBN, “Phytosociology and phenology”, “The floodplain”, “Vossia cuspidata – Echinochloa scabra floodplain grassland”, page 61, column 1:

     Though small in number, hippopotamusses at Lochinvar consume a large amount of grass and locally, disruption of the wet floodplain soil may be severe.