different between trunk vs elephas

English

Etymology

From Middle English tronke, trunke, borrowed from Old French tronc (“alms box, tree trunk, headless body”), from Latin truncus (“a stock, lopped tree trunk”), from truncus (“cut off, maimed, mutilated”). For the verb, compare French tronquer, and see truncate. Doublet of truncus and tronk.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /t???k/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /t???k/, [t?????k], [t???k]
• Rhymes: -??k

Noun

trunk (plural trunks)

1. (heading, biological) Part of a body.
   1. The usually single, more or less upright part of a tree, between the roots and the branches: the tree trunk.
   2. The torso.
   3. The conspicuously extended, mobile, nose-like organ of an animal such as a sengi, a tapir or especially an elephant. The trunks of various kinds of animals might be adapted to probing and sniffing, as in the sengis, or be partly prehensile, as in the tapir, or be a versatile prehensile organ for manipulation, feeding, drinking and fighting as in the elephant.
2. (heading) A container.
   1. A large suitcase, chest, or similar receptacle for carrying or storing personal possessions, usually with a hinged, often domed lid, and handles at each end, so that generally it takes two persons to carry a full trunk.

      • There is an hour or two, after the passengers have embarked, which is disquieting and fussy. Mail bags, so I understand, are being put on board. Stewards, carrying cabin trunks, swarm in the corridors.

   2. A box or chest usually covered with leather, metal, or cloth, or sometimes made of leather, hide, or metal, for holding or transporting clothes or other goods.
   3. (US, Canada, automotive) The luggage storage compartment of a sedan/saloon style car; a boot
3. (heading) A channel for flow of some kind.
   1. (US, telecommunications) A circuit between telephone switchboards or other switching equipment.
   2. A chute or conduit, or a watertight shaft connecting two or more decks.
   3. A long, large box, pipe, or conductor, made of plank or metal plates, for various uses, as for conveying air to a mine or to a furnace, water to a mill, grain to an elevator, etc.
   4. (archaic) A long tube through which pellets of clay, peas, etc., are driven by the force of the breath. A peashooter
      • 13 March, 1623, James Howell, "To the Lord Viscount Col. from Madrid" in Epistolæ Ho-Elianæ

        He shot Sugar Plums at them out of a Trunk.

   5. (mining) A flume or sluice in which ores are separated from the slimes in which they are contained.
4. (software engineering) In software projects under source control: the most current source tree, from which the latest unstable builds (so-called "trunk builds") are compiled.
5. The main line or body of anything.
   1. (transport) A main line in a river, canal, railroad, or highway system.
   2. (architecture) The part of a pilaster between the base and capital, corresponding to the shaft of a column.
6. A large pipe forming the piston rod of a steam engine, of sufficient diameter to allow one end of the connecting rod to be attached to the crank, and the other end to pass within the pipe directly to the piston, thus making the engine more compact.
7. (in the plural) Short for swimming trunks.

Synonyms

• (luggage storage compartment of a sedan/saloon style car): boot (UK, Aus), dicky (India)
• (upright part of a tree): tree trunk
• (nose of an elephant): proboscis

Hyponyms

• (a large suitcase; a chest for holding goods): footlocker

Derived terms

Translations

Further reading

• trunk in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• trunk in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.

Verb

trunk (third-person singular simple present trunks, present participle trunking, simple past and past participle trunked)

1. (transitive, obsolete) To lop off; to curtail; to truncate.
2. (transitive, mining) To extract (ores) from the slimes in which they are contained, by means of a trunk.
3. (telecommunications) To provide simultaneous network access to multiple clients by sharing a set of circuits, carriers, channels, or frequencies.

Anagrams

• K-turn

Latin

Alternative forms

• eleph?ns, elephantus

Etymology

From Ancient Greek ?????? (eléphas), from Mycenaean Greek ???????????? (e-re-pa) from a compound of Berber *e?u and either Egyptian ?bw,

or Sanskrit ?? (íbha).

Pronunciation

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /?e.le.p?a?s/, [?????p?ä?s?]
• (Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /?e.le.fas/, [???l?f?s]

Noun

eleph?s m (genitive elephantis); third declension

1. elephant
2. elephantiasis

Declension

Third-declension noun.

Descendants

Descendants derived from eleph?s, elephantus and eleph?ns all listed here.

• Corsican: elefante
• Italian: elefante
  • ? Sicilian: lifanti (or inherited from Latin)
• Ladin: elefant
• Ligurian: liofante
• Lombard: elefant
• Navarro-Aragonese: [Term?]
  • Aragonese: elefant, alifant
• Neapolitan: liufante, alifante
• Old Leonese: [Term?]
  • Asturian: elefante
  • Mirandese: eilefante
• Old Occitan: elephant
  • Catalan: elefant
  • Occitan: elefant
• Old Portuguese: helefante, elefante, elifante
  • Galician: elefante
  • Portuguese: elefante
    • Papiamentu: elefante
• Rhaeto-Romance:
  • Friulian: elefant
  • Romansch: elefant
• Piedmontese: elefant
• Sardinian: elefante, elefanti
• Sicilian: lifanti (or via Italian)
• Vulgar Latin: *olifantus
  • Old French: olifan, elefant, olifant, oliphant
    • Middle French: olifant
      • French: olifant
        • ? Catalan: olifant
        • ? Finnish: olifantti
        • ? Norwegian: olifant
        • ? Portuguese: olifante
    • Walloon: elefant
    • ? Breton: olifant
    • ? Middle Dutch: olifant
      • Dutch: olifant
        • Afrikaans: olifant
    • ? Middle English: olifant, olifaunt, oliphant, olyphant (from olifan, olifant form)
      • English: oliphant, olifant, olyfaunte, olyphant, oliphaunt
      • ? Cornish: olifans
    • ? Middle English: elefant, elefaunt (from elefan, elefant form)
      • English: elephant
        • ? Welsh: eliffant
        • ? Hawaiian: ?elepani
        • ? Maori: arewhana
      • Scots: elephant
      • ? Manx: elefant
    • ? Old Spanish: elifant, alefant, eleofant
      • Ladino: ??????????? (elefante)
      • Spanish: elefante
        • ? Basque: elefante
        • ? Chol: elefanti
        • ? Cebuano: elepante
        • ? Hiligaynon: elepante
        • ? Classical Nahuatl: elepantli
        • ? Quechua: ilijanti
        • ? Tagalog: elepante
  • ? Gothic: ???????????????????????????????? (ulbandus) (uncertain; one of several theories)
    • ? Slavic: *vel?b(l)?d? (see there for further descendants)
• ? Albanian: elefant
• ? Germanic: *ulbanduz (“camel”) (see there for further descendants)
• ? West Germanic: *elpand (“elephant; ivory”) (see there for further descendants)
• ? Middle French: elephant
  • French: éléphant
    • Haitian Creole: elefan
    • ? Romanian: elefant
  • ? Irish: eilifint
  • ? Norman: êléphant, éléphant
• ? Middle High German: hëlfant
  • Alemannic German: Elifant
  • German: Elefant, Elephant
    • ? Lower Sorbian: elefant
    • ? Saterland Frisian: Elefant
  • Luxembourgish: Elefant
  • Vilamovian: elefaont
  • Yiddish: ?????????? (helfand)

Synonyms

• (elephant): barrus, eleph?ns
• (elephantiasis): elephantiasis, elephantia, elephanticus morbus

See also

• eleph?ns
• elephantus

References

• elephas in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition, 1883–1887)
• elephas in Harry Thurston Peck, editor (1898) Harper's Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, New York: Harper & Brothers
• elephas in William Smith, editor (1854, 1857) A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, volume 1 & 2, London: Walton and Maberly
• elephas in William Smith et al., editor (1890) A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, London: William Wayte. G. E. Marindin