olifant means an ancient hunting horn, made of ivory. It carries an Arena rating of 1527, earned across 76 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, olifant ranks #464 of 17,130 for Most Beautiful Words, #1,228 of 17,127 for Most Vivid Words, #1,881 of 17,140 for Most Whimsical Words, #1,930 of 17,128 for Most Ponderous Words.
Why “olifant” is a great word
OLIFANT — [Noun] An archaic term for an elephant or, more specifically, a medieval hunting horn crafted from an elephant's ivory tusk. From Middle English olifaunt, from Old French olifant/oliphaunt, from Latin elephantus ("elephant, ivory"). Unlike "elephant," the modern zoological term, or "bugle," a utilitarian brass signal-horn, an olifant is the animal transmuted by craft into an instrument of ceremony and war. It is the cold, spiraling weight of a tusk carved with runic scenes; the raw blast that carried Roland's doomed call across the pass at Roncevaux; and the polished heirloom resting silent on a stone mantel—a monument to the vanity of turning a living force into a tool for ceremony, its final voice a tangible ghost.
Etymology
From Middle English olifaunt, from Old French oliphaunt, from Latin elephantus. See elephant.
noun
- An ancient hunting horn, made of ivory.e.g.“And he sang them the staves of the Olifant, the magic horn,—how Roland would not sound it in his pride, and sounded it at Turpin’s bidding, but too late[.]” — 1866, Charles Kingsley, chapter 35, in Hereward the Wake, London: Nelson, page 479:
- An elephant.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
Words closest in meaning
By meaning, not spelling — each word's AI semantic fingerprint, nearest first.