Also in L. form tragelaphus, pl. -i. [ad. L. tragelaph-us, a. Gr. τραγέλαφος, f. τράγος he-goat + ἔλαφος deer.]
1. (Rendering Gr. τραγέλαφος.) a. A name for some foreign species of capriform antelope or other horned beast, vaguely known to the ancients.
1398. Trevisa, Barth. De P. R., XVIII. ci. (Bodl. MS.). Tragelaphus is icleped Ircoceruus also and haþ þat name tragelaphus of trages þat is a gotte bucke and elephos þat is an herte. Ibid. Tragelaphi … som beþ of þe kinde of þe herte.
1607. Topsell, Four-f. Beasts (1658), 93. Of the first kinde of Tragelaphus which may be called a Deer-goat. Ibid., 94. There is another kinde … like a Deer … Pliny affirmeth, that they are found about the river Phasis, in Arabia and Arachotæ,… a City of India … which [beast] the Græcians call Tragelaphos, and the Germans, Ein Brandhirse.… The figure of another Tragelaphus, or Deer-Goat, expressed by Bellonius … it wanteth a beard, and the hair thereof resembleth an Ibex-Goat…: the horns … like a Goats, but more crooked … which he never loseth.
1656. Blount, Glossogr., Tragelaph (tragelaphus), the great and blackish deere called a stone-buck, deer-goat, or goat-hart.
1774. Goldsm., Nat. Hist. (1862), I. II. v. 327. There is in the forests of Germany, a kind of stag, named by the ancients the Tragelaphus, and which the natives call the bran deer, or the brown deer.
b. Myth. A fabulous or fictitious beast compounded of a goat and a stag; hence allusively.
1644. Featly, Levites Scourge, 60. What Chimera’s, Tragelaphusses, and Hippocentaurs dost thou talk of?
a. 1670. Hacket, Abp. Williams, II. (1693), 49. Tragelaphi, Satyrs and Griffins, Cocks and Bulls.
1818. R. P. Knight, Anc. Art & Mythol., § 114. 88. Among the principal of these symbols [of Diana] is the deer,… which is sometimes blended into one figure with the goat, so as to form a composite fictitious animal called a Tragelephus.
1898. C. Thomas, Faust, I. p. lxiv. The ‘tragelaph’ had to be disposed of!
2. Zool. Any antelope of the modern genus Tragelaphus, as the S. African boschbok, T. sylvaticus, and the W. African harnessed antelope, T. scriptus, Speke’s Tragelaph, T. Spekii.
1888. Cassell’s Encycl. Dict., Tragelaphus.
1903. Sir H. H. Johnston, Grenfell & Congo, II. xxxiii. 923. In Tragelaphs the Congo regions are well endowed.
1910. Contemp. Rev., Suppl. Nov., 11. Two of these ruffians shot over fifty of the rare antelope called Speke’s tragelaph.
So Tragelaphine a., belonging to the group Tragelaphīnæ of antelopes, typified by the genus Tragelaphus; sb. an antelope of this group.
1891. Flower & Lydekker, Mammals, ix. 345. Tragelaphine Section…. Includes large, so-called Bovine, Antelopes now mainly characteristic of the Ethiopian region.
1900. Nature, 11 Oct., 585/1. If the markings of the Tragelaphines have the significance here attached to them, they should be better developed in the species that live in the bush than in those that frequent the open.
1905. P. C. Mitchell, Guide Gard. Zool. Soc. (ed. 3), 43. The Tragelaphine Group (Tragelaphinæ) contains mostly large Antelopes with spirally-twisted horns.
