say it: TAWR-tuhs
tortoise is a noun meaning "usually herbivorous land turtles having clawed elephant-like limbs; worldwide in arid area except Australia and Antarctica". It carries one recorded sense.
usually herbivorous land turtles having clawed elephant-like limbs; worldwide in arid area except Australia and Antarctica
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.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for tortoise come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.