Do you need to qualify the noun mammoth with "prehistoric"?

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Are there other kinds of mammoths? New Wave Mammoths? Civil War Era Mammoths?
Blah, blah, new/recent frustrations in the English language.

Huk-L (Huk-L), Thursday, 15 December 2005 18:57 (twenty years ago)

Perhaps mammoth has gone through some semantic change to suggest something large, and the 'prehistoric' removes any ambiguity.

scotstvo (scotstvo), Thursday, 15 December 2005 19:00 (twenty years ago)

You do. Also with "woolly".

accentmonkey (accentmonkey), Thursday, 15 December 2005 19:01 (twenty years ago)

There are whole mammoths frozen in the Siberian tundra as we speak... they may be prehistoric in origin, but the corpes exist in this day and age - tusks, fur, everything.

andy --, Thursday, 15 December 2005 19:03 (twenty years ago)

(Speaking of which, whatever became of that plan to clone one? I was up for some playing God just to trip out on one of those freaky things.)

andy --, Thursday, 15 December 2005 19:04 (twenty years ago)

http://metagame.com/uploads/Vs/2005/avengers/1mammomax.jpg

Huk-L (Huk-L), Thursday, 15 December 2005 19:05 (twenty years ago)

OED website has a nice article on the word:
http://www.oed.com/learning/word-stories/mammoth.html

"The first instances of this adjectival use occur in the United States, and at first seem to refer to a large cheese presented to the President Thomas Jefferson"

Rhodia (Rhodia), Thursday, 15 December 2005 19:06 (twenty years ago)

http://tinyurl.com/bsdzn


THEY'RE COMING BACK!!

andy -, Wednesday, 21 December 2005 21:18 (twenty years ago)

fourteen years pass...

here's something you don't see every day
https://www.facebook.com/naturalhistory/videos/822394871538282/

Fuck the NRA (ulysses), Wednesday, 15 January 2020 22:58 (six years ago)


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