mastodon

noun

1. Extinct elephant-like mammal of the genus †Mammut that flourished worldwide from Miocene through Pleistocene times; differs from elephants and mammoths in the form of the molar teeth.

   “When, exactly, Europeans first stumbled upon the bones of an American mastodon is unclear. An isolated molar unearthed in a field in upstate New York was sent off to London in 1705; it was labeled the “tooth of a Giant”.”

2. (figuratively)Anything awkwardly large or unwieldy.

   “The battery is dying, and Natalia's iPhone charger doesn't fit my mastodon of a phone anyway.”

   “Nor does it work for governance: the policy has become such a mastodon that we can't adapt it quickly enough to different regions or different circumstances.”

3. A nickname for both the 4-8-0 and (though erroneously) the 4-10-0 train configurations.

name

1. A decentralized microblogging platform, part of the Fediverse.

   “However, the underlying design of platforms within [The Free Network] such as Mastodon, Diaspora and others ... opens the door to security and harassment problems.”

   “Since Musk bought the bird app last month, users are looking for ways to access Mastodon, the open source microblogging platform that isn’t quite Twitter but seems to be the closest thing to it, and they’re signing up for its many servers in droves.”