heffalump

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See also: Heffalump

English

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WOTD – 26 October 2021

Etymology

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Probably a childish mispronunciation of elephant, perhaps influenced by half a lump (as in "I'll have half a lump of sugar in my tea"), coined by the English author Alan Alexander Milne (1882–1956) as the name of an imaginary animal in his book Winnie-the-Pooh (1926). The animal was not described in the book, but the illustrator Ernest Howard Shepard (1879–1976) depicted it as an elephant.[1]

Sense 2 (“something which is elusive”) refers to the fact that in Milne’s book the characters Winnie-the-Pooh and Piglet set a trap for, but are unable to capture, a heffalump.

Pronunciation

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Noun

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heffalump (plural heffalumps)

A heffalump.
  1. (chiefly childish, humorous) (A child's name for) an elephant.
    We went to the zoo and saw some heffalumps.
    • 1973, The Malahat Review, Victoria, B.C.: University of Victoria, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 82:
      Mrs. Jumbo stood at the door with the baby heffalump in her arms. She waved a large blue handkerchief and heffalump waved his little white paws. "Goodbye, Daddy Jumbo, Goodbye" they cried. "Goodbye Mummy Jumbo, goodbye baby heffalump."
    • 1983 January, Avram Davidson, “Adventures in Unhistory: What Gave All Those Mammoths Cold Feet?”, in [George H. Scithers], editor, Amazing Science Fiction Stories, volume 28, number 9, Lake Geneva, Wis.: Dragon Publishing, TSR Hobbies, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 90:
      From time to time to time, bones clearly recognized as those of elephants have been found in the North Temperate Zone. In Western Europe the explanation always was, "These are the remains of the army-elephants of Hannibal the Carthaginian." […] A little reflection on the part of any Latin student—which in those days meant any educated person—would have produced the memorable detail that the courageous Carthaginian had invaded Roman Europe with only nineteen or twenty heffalumps … and that the remains of hundreds had turned up.
    • 2007, Nuno Morais, chapter 1, in Margaret Hart, transl., Spare Parts (Unholy Commerce; 1), Chicago, Ill.: Babelcube, published April 2020, →ISBN:
      Yeees, we're going to the zoo to see animals. There are lions and tiggers and snakes and heffalumps.
    • 2014 May 11, Matt Simon, “Fantastically Wrong: History’s Most Hilarious Misconceptions About the Elephant”, in Wired‎[1], San Francisco, Calif.: Condé Nast Publications, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 20 July 2020:
      In the "Heffalumps and Woozles" ditty from Winnie the Pooh, elephants—those would be the heffalumps—wear tuxedos and use their trunks as accordions and suddenly turn blue. Fantastical, to be sure, but it's downright unimaginative compared to what European natural historians used to believe about the elephant: That it has no knees and it can't have sex until it eats the ridiculously toxic mandrake root, and even when it successfully mates, dragons eat its baby.
  2. Something that is elusive.
    • 2008, Eva Cools, “The Hunt for the Heffalump Continues: Who is the Flemish Entrepreneur?”, in Hans Landström, Hans Crijns, Eddy Laveren, David Smallbone, editors, Entrepreneurship, Sustainable Growth and Performance: Frontiers in European Entrepreneurship Research, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, Northampton, Mass.: Edward Elgar Publishing, →ISBN, part II (Entrepreneurs and Their Role), page 30:
      With the study in this chapter, we continue the hunt for the Heffalump to answer the 'who is the entrepreneur' question [...]. The Heffalump is a character from Winnie-the-Pooh that has been hunted by many individuals using various ingenious trapping devices, but no one has succeeded in capturing it so far. All who claim to have caught sight of it report that it is enormous, but they disagree on its particularities [...].
    • 2009, Zoltán J. Ács, László Szerb, “The History of Entrepreneurship Index Building”, in The Global Entrepreneurship Index (GEINDEX) (Foundations and Trends in Entrepreneurship; vol. 5, no. 5), Hanover, Mass., Delft: Now Publishers, →ISBN, page 13:
      In fact, some researchers are skeptical about the feasibility of constructing such an index and describe it as a "search for [a] heffalump" [...] or looking for a "Holy Grail" [...].
  3. (derogatory) A clumsy or overweight person.
    Synonyms: see Thesaurus:fat person
    Antonyms: see Thesaurus:thin person
    • 1997, Liz Jensen, “The Scrapie Dinosaur”, in Ark Baby, London: Bloomsbury, published 2011, →ISBN:
      Violet, under the auspices of Jacques-Yves Cabillaud, had been continuing to expand her childish girth. At two she had already been pronounced a heffalump; by seven, she was the size and shape of a barrel.
    • 2009, Piers Morgan, chapter 3, in Misadventures of a Big Mouth Brit, London: Ebury Press, published 2010, →ISBN, page 117:
      As I sat in my Virgin seat, I spotted an enormous fat bloke waddling towards me and thought: Please, God, not him. There's nothing worse than sitting next to a heaving heffalump on an 11-hour flight, not least because they eat all the best food.
    • 2010, Caroline Anderson, Christmas Eve Baby (Brides of Penhally Bay), Don Mills, Ont.: Harlequin Enterprises, →ISBN, page 60:
      'Seven-thirty, then,' she agreed, because for some perverse reason she wanted to go home after her surgery, shower and change into something—well, something else. Something pretty. Something that didn't make her feel like a heffalump.
    • 2012, Anna Hutton-North, chapter 5, in Rural Affairs (Drayton Beauchamp Series), [Morrisville, N.C.]: Lulu.com, →ISBN, page 32:
      Every time Chloe met Natalia she felt like some lumbering heffalump compared to the diminutive but full-chested South American beauty who had perfect chocolate brown hair, matching eyes and permanently tanned skin.
    • 2014, Caitlin Moran, How to Build a Girl‎[2], London: Ebury Press, →ISBN:
      'What are you, thumping around like fucking heffalumps? The twins are trying to get to sleep,' he says, staring at us on the bed.
    • 2019 June 13, David Sexton, “Battle of the Super-Eaters: 3,000 Calories a Minute: Britain’s got talent? You’ll believe it when you feast your eyes on our top gobblers”, in George Osborne, editor, Evening Standard‎[3], London: Evening Standard, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 30 December 2020:
      They're bound to be whoppers, aren't they, competitive eaters? Lard-buckets. Human dumpsters. Mega-heffalumps. Not at all. This hard-to-swallow documentary comes to show us that top-class scoffers are actually athletes, not only fit but thinner than average.
    • 2019 October 9, Rowan Horncastle, “Renault Megane R.S. 300 Trophy – Long-term Review”, in Top Gear, BBC‎[4], archived from the original on 30 December 2020:
      With cars getting bigger and heavier, there’s a proper thirst for four-wheel-steering to help hide heffalumps and make fast cars faster – 4WS is a useful way of killing two birds with one stone.

Alternative forms

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Derived terms

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Translations

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References

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  1. ^ “heffalump, n.”, in OED Online Paid subscription required⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, September 2018; “heffalump, n.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.

Further reading

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