elephant [ME] Perhaps surprisingly, elephant did not come to us from an African or Indian language, but via Latin from Greek. The Greek word elephas meant both ‘ivory’ and ‘elephant’. It is found in the work of the poet Homer, who probably lived in the 8th century bc, and may have been taken up by the Greeks from an ancient language of the Middle East. Elephant appeared in English in the 14th century, but before that people called them oliphants or elps. The related word olfend was used to mean ‘a camel’—in those days northern Europeans had only vague notions of exotic animals. See also camel, chameleon, giraffe, room, white.