🇵🇹 Portuguese

elefantes

Did you know? This word is a cognate — it looks similar in English and has the same meaning. Cognates are usually easier to remember!
masculine

os elefantes

elephants

Try it

elefantes
/us eleˈfɐ̃tʃis/
← masculine feminine →

How do you say elefantes in Portuguese?

IPA
/us eleˈfɐ̃tʃis/

How do you pronounce elefantes in Portuguese?

elefantes is pronounced /us eleˈfɐ̃tʃis/ in Portuguese.

Example sentences

O elefante africano é muito grande e pesado.

The African elephant is very large and heavy.

Este elefante velho foi libertado do circo.

This old elephant was freed from the circus.

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Why is it masculine?

Elefantes is masculine in Portuguese because it derives from Latin "elephantus," which inherited the masculine gender from Greek "ἐλέφας" (elephas), where the word naturally took masculine grammatical gender despite referring to an animal that could be either sex biologically. This gender assignment simply persisted through the Romance languages as an arbitrary grammatical convention rather than following any logical rule.

What is the Portuguese word for elephants?

The Portuguese word for elephants is os elefantes — masculine.

Practice with Accord

Swipe through hundreds of words and master grammatical gender in Portuguese.

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