hippo
Pluralhippos
- 1Clipping of hippopotamus.
A hippo can stay underwater for several minutes at a time.
Tourists snapped photos as the hippo opened its enormous jaws.
Note
The everyday name for the animal, and not a recent one: Joseph Conrad's "The Heart of Darkness" (1899) already has an old hippo roaming the station grounds at night. It can mean any member of the family Hippopotamidae or the common species in particular. The plural is a regular hippos, and a group of them is called a bloat.
- 2An insulting nickname for an overweight or obese person.
He overheard a classmate sneering and calling him a hippo behind his back.
Cruel commenters online branded the actress a hippo after she gained weight.
Similarfatty, fatso, whale, fatass
Note
An insult that works by comparison with a large animal, just as whale does, and it sits in the same set as fatso and fatty. It has no neutral or affectionate use. In careful writing it appears only inside reported speech, as the word someone else used.
- 3A troop carrier with protective armor that served with the South African Defence Force.
The convoy of hippos rolled through the township under a tense curfew.
Each hippo could carry a full squad while deflecting blasts from below.
Note
Military slang from South Africa, now historical, borrowing the animal's name for a bulky, mine-protected troop carrier. Its V-shaped hull steered landmine blasts away from the soldiers inside. Keep the word to writing about that army and its era, and set the context early. Without it, a reader will picture the animal itself before any vehicle.
- 4An informal name for the Hippopotamus Defence, a flexible chess opening in which a player makes only modest pawn moves and develops both bishops on the flanks.
Like a coiled spring left compact and passive until the opponent overcommits, then released.
Black adopted a hippo, content to shuffle pieces behind a wall of pawns until White committed.
Several grandmasters have wheeled out a hippo as a surprise weapon in must-win games.
Note
A chess player's shorthand for a hypermodern setup. One side fianchettoes both bishops, posts the knights on d7 and e7, and keeps its pawns on the third rank, waiting for the opponent to overextend. Players treat the nickname like any opening name and take it with an article: they adopt, play or wheel out a hippo.
Practice
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