tepui

English

A tepui

Alternative forms

• tepuy

Etymology

From Spanish tepuy, from Pemon tüpü (“rocky system, mountain, tepui”), though sometimes erroneously said to be from Pemon tapüi (“house”) in the sense of ‘house of the gods’. Perhaps ultimately related to Proto-Cariban *tôpu (“stone”), though the Pemon etymon is not a direct descendant.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈtɛpwi/

Noun

tepui (plural tepuis or tepuies)

1. A type of table-top mountain or mesa found in the Guiana Highlands of South America, especially in Venezuela.
   • 2005, P. E. Berry, R. Riina, Insights into the diversity of the Pantepui flora and the biogeographic complexity of the Guayana Shield, Ib Friis, Henrik Balslev (editors), Plant Diversity and Complexity Patterns, page 153,

     Once a population becomes adapted to the tepui summit environment, it is more likely to colonize other areas with similar environmental conditions, so it would need to disperse between tepui summits to expand its geographical range.

   • 2010, Robert A. L. Wray, “Chaper 9: The Gran Sabana”, in Piotr Migoń, editor, Geomorphological Landscapes of the World, Springer, page 82:

     One of the most dominant landscape features in the Gran Sabana is a flight of planation surfaces rising from modern sea level to the summits of the high tepui (Briceño and Schubert 1990).

   • 2019, D. Bruce Means, César Barrio-Amorós, “13: Islands in the Sky: Snakes on South American Tepuis”, in Harvey Lillywhite, Marcio Martins, editors, Islands and Snakes, Oxford University Press, page 325:

     On the other hand, because birds and small mammals are relatively rare on tepuis, the principal potential vertebrate food for snakes on tepui summits would seem to be frogs, most of which are nocturnal (e.g., species of Tepuihyla, Stefania, Hypsiboas, Pristimantis, Anomaloglossus, and Otophryne).

Related terms

• tepuian

Translations

mountain with a flat top

• Ye'kwana: jüü

Anagrams

• UPite, tie up, tie-up, uptie

Latin

Verb

tepuī

1. first-person singular perfect active indicative of tepeō