dinosaur

noun
di·no·saur
/ˈdaɪnəsɔː(ɹ)/

Those animals of the clade Dinosauria that existed during the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods and are now extinct.&nbsp

Other meanings

Any of the animals belonging to the clade Dinosauria, including its sole surviving lineage: Neornithes.
“Many people love their backyard birds, but some of us may not realize that those feathery friends are also literally dinosaurs, in a biologically accurate sense of that word.”
Any extinct reptile, not necessarily belonging to Dinosauria, that existed between about 230 million and 65 million years ago, as well as the stem-mammal Dimetrodon.
“Pterosaurs, plesiosaurs, icthyosaurs — I don't know, they're all dinosaurs to me!”

Example sentences

“The dinosaur was going round running riot.”
Tatoeba · deniko · CC0
“Non-avian dinosaurs are all dinosaurs other than birds.”
Tatoeba · Raizin · CC0
“How do we know dinosaurs existed?”
Tatoeba · shekitten · CC0

Word history

From Ancient Greek "δεινός" (terrible, awesome, mighty, fearfully great).

Where this comes from

This definition is adapted from “dinosaur” on Wiktionary, by its contributors; example sentences are from Tatoeba, credited to their authors above, published under CC BY-SA 4.0. This page is published under the same licence.