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TIGER
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Large feline of forests in most of Asia having a tawny coat with black stripes; endangered
Synonyms:
Panthera tigris; tiger
Classified under:
Hypernyms ("tiger" is a kind of...):
big cat; cat (any of several large cats typically able to roar and living in the wild)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "tiger"):
tiger cub (a young tiger)
Bengal tiger (southern short-haired tiger)
tigress (a female tiger)
Holonyms ("tiger" is a member of...):
genus Panthera; Panthera (lions; leopards; snow leopards; jaguars; tigers; cheetahs; saber-toothed tigers)
Sense 2
Meaning:
A fierce or audacious person
Example:
it aroused the tiger in me
Classified under:
Hypernyms ("tiger" is a kind of...):
individual; mortal; person; somebody; someone; soul (a human being)
Context examples:
In 2011, some 15 years into a long-term study of the ecological importance of tiger sharks in Shark Bay, a heat wave struck the region.
(Sharks, the seagrass protectors, National Science Foundation)
To inquire what he might have done, if he had had any boldness, would be like inquiring what a mongrel cur might do, if it had the spirit of a tiger.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
Elephants, as well as other large, charismatic animals such as tigers, monkeys and civet cats, are under attack from hunters and poachers.
(Overhunting of large animals has catastrophic effects on trees, NSF)
And while there is a concerted effort to protect endangered species such as pandas, tigers and rhinos, other organisms are being overlooked.
(Nearly Half the Planet's Species Could Be Wiped Out by the End of This Century, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)
The study in the journal PLOS Biology lists what the authors say are the world's 10 most charismatic animals: tigers, lions, elephants, giraffes, leopards, pandas, cheetahs, polar bears, gray wolves and gorillas.
(Study: Popularity of Wildlife Can Harm Public's Perception, VOA)
I knew little of prehistoric life, but I had a clear remembrance of one book which I had read in which it spoke of creatures who would live upon our lions and tigers as a cat lives upon mice.
(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
If I tell her she will not believe me. You may remember the old Persian saying, ‘There is danger for him who taketh the tiger cub, and danger also for whoso snatches a delusion from a woman.’ There is as much sense in Hafiz as in Horace, and as much knowledge of the world.
(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Over a period of almost seven years, Cassini’s cameras surveyed the south polar terrain of the small moon, a unique geological basin renowned for its four prominent "tiger stripe” fractures and the geysers of tiny icy particles and water vapor first sighted there nearly 10 years ago. The result of the survey is a map of 101 geysers, each erupting from one of the tiger stripe fractures, and the discovery that individual geysers are coincident with small hot spots. These relationships pointed the way to the geysers’ origin.###!!!###
(101 Geysers on Icy Saturn Moon, NASA)
The excess heat is especially pronounced over three fractures that are not unlike the tiger stripes — prominent, actively venting fractures that slice across the pole — except that they don't appear to be active at the moment.
(Cassini Sees Heat Below the Icy Surface of Enceladus, NASA)
If Miss Ingram had been a good and noble woman, endowed with force, fervour, kindness, sense, I should have had one vital struggle with two tigers—jealousy and despair: then, my heart torn out and devoured, I should have admired her—acknowledged her excellence, and been quiet for the rest of my days: and the more absolute her superiority, the deeper would have been my admiration—the more truly tranquil my quiescence.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
