edentate

1. 1.

   having few if any teeth

   “anteaters are edentate animals”

   Synonymsedentaledentulate

   Similartoothless

Other forms of edentate

plural

edentates·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about edentate

What does edentate mean?

edentate means "primitive terrestrial mammal with few if any teeth; of tropical Central America and South America". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in edentate?

edentate has 3 syllables: e-den-tate. The stress falls on "e".

What is another word for edentate?

Close synonyms include edental, edentulate. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is edentate a common word?

edentate is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.