Emily Dickinson Lexicon

EL-E-PHANT'INE, a.

1. Pertaining to the elephant; huge; resembling an elephant; or perhaps white, like ivory.
2. In antiquity, an appellation given to certain books in which the Romans registered the transactions of the senate, magistrates, emperors and generals; so called, perhaps, as being made of ivory.
3. In gealogy, the elephantine epoch is that in which there was a preponderance of large pachydermata. Mantell.