meaning of elephant
1. A mammal of the order Proboscidia, of which two living species, Elephas Indicus and E. Africanus, and several fossil species, are known. They have a proboscis or trunk, and two large ivory tusks proceeding from the extremity of the upper jaw, and curving upwards. The molar teeth are large and have transverse folds. Elephants are the largest land animals now existing.
2. Ivory; the tusk of the elephant.
3. elephant Large, grey, four-legged mammal. elephantine Used of programs or systems that are both conspicuous hogs owing perhaps to poor design founded on brute force and ignorance and exceedingly hairy in source form. An elephantine program may be functional and even friendly, but as in the old joke about being in bed with an elephant its tough to have around all the same and, like a pachyderm, difficult to maintain. In extreme cases, hackers have been known to make trumpeting sounds or perform expressive proboscatory mime at the mention of the offending program. Usage: semi-humorous. Compare "has the elephant nature" and the somewhat more pejorative monstrosity. See also second-system effect and baroque. [Jargon File] elevator controller An archetypal dumb embedded-systems application, like toaster which superseded it. During one period 1983--84 in the deliberations of ANSI X3J11 the C standardisation committee this was the canonical example of a really stupid, memory-limited computation environment. "You cant require "printf3" to be part of the default run-time library - what if youre targeting an elevator controller?" Elevator controllers became important rhetorical weapons on both sides of several holy wars. ELF Binary format used by System V Release 4 Unix. ELI 1.
4. five-toed pachyderm
Related Words
elephant | elephant bird | elephant ear | elephant seal | elephant tree | elephant yam | elephant-tusk | elephantiac | elephantiasis | elephantiasis neuromatosa | elephantiasis scroti | elephantidae | elephantine | elephantoid | elephantoidal | elephantopus | elephants ear | elephants-foot |
