Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Lacking teeth.
  • adjective Of or belonging to the former order Edentata of mammals having few or no teeth, including the anteaters, armadillos, and sloths. These animals have been reclassified in the order Xenarthra.
  • noun A member of the former order Edentata.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In botany, having no teeth, as an entire leaf.
  • Edentulous; toothless.
  • Of or pertaining to the Edentata, and thus having at least no front teeth.
  • noun One of the Edentata; an ineducabilian placental mammal without incisors.
  • noun A toothless creature.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Zoöl.) One of the Edentata.
  • adjective Destitute of teeth
  • adjective (Zoöl.) Belonging to the Edentata.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Lacking teeth.
  • noun Any mammal that has few or no teeth, but especially the anteaters, armadillos, and sloths of the former order Edentata.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun primitive terrestrial mammal with few if any teeth; of tropical Central America and South America
  • adjective having few if any teeth

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Latin ēdentātus, past participle of ēdentāre, to knock out the teeth : ē-, ex-, ex- + dēns, dent-, tooth; see dent- in Indo-European roots.]

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word edentate.

Examples

  • The main reason people loose all their teeth i.e., become "edentate" is tooth decay, not gum disease, as this figure shows, and as the article explains:

    The Marginal Tooth, Bryan Caplan | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty 2009

  • Everyone knows an edentate woman performing a one woman show, or giving a keynote speech, is inspiring to other dentally challenged people!

    Ellen Snortland: Sicko Reprise, Please Ellen Snortland 2010

  • Everyone knows an edentate woman performing a one woman show, or giving a keynote speech, is inspiring to other dentally challenged people!

    Ellen Snortland: Sicko Reprise, Please Ellen Snortland 2010

  • Everyone knows an edentate woman performing a one woman show, or giving a keynote speech, is inspiring to other dentally challenged people!

    Ellen Snortland: Sicko Reprise, Please 2009

  • Note 3: armadillo, any of a family (Dasypodidae) of burrowing edentate mammals found from the southern U.S. to Argentina and having the body and head encased in an armor of small bony plates.

    Albert Collins Lyrics 2009

  • Later, Jon Voight scales a cliff and wounds himself with his own crossbow while killing an innocent man he mistakes for the pervert's edentate sidekick.

    Faith-Based Initiative 2008

  • There are no endemic birds restricted to the llanos ecoregion, and only two mammals: the marsupial Monodelphis orinoci and the edentate Dasypus sabanicola.

    Llanos 2007

  • As would have been the case a million years ago, a typical colonist can expect to be edentate by the time he or she is thirty years old, having suffered many skull-cracking toothaches on the way.

    Galapagos Vonnegut, Kurt 1985

  • Note 3: armadillo, any of a family (Dasypodidae) of burrowing edentate mammals found from the southern U.S. to Argentina and having the body and head encased in an armor of small bony plates.

    Don't Go Reaching Across My Plate Albert Collins 1980

  • He secured Brigham's everlasting gratitude by making him a very handsome false set, and performing the same service for all of his favorite, but edentate wives.

    The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 78, April, 1864 Various

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.