Lesson learned: always look up the word mastodon before making a movie about one.

Technically, however, these wily cinematographers’ use of the word may not be completely in error.

Although the term "mastodon" is almost universally understood to refer to a type of prehistoric mammal closely related to -but distinct from- wooly mammoths and modern elephants, this author recalls recently finding a less commonly used, and perhaps archaic, definition of "mastodon" as a broader term for gigantic beasts in general.

Then, Dear Reader, as hope threatened to lose itself in darkness, Merriam-Webster rode to the rescue, like some fabled, eleventh-hour cavalry, bringing with it a stay of execution, a reprieve from the Governor of Grammar...

There, after the de rigueur verbiage pertaining to extinct proboscidian megafauna, humbly listed as though it were a mere afterthought, was the secondary definition of a mastodon as, simply, “one that is unusually large.”

At last! Though it is almost a technicality, our filmic word-philanderers are saved, for the burrowing, single-horned quadruped in question, the kaiju, or mysterious creature, known as Baragon, is nothing if not unusually large. Hence our reckless, celluloid raconteurs did not err in their admittedly controversial description of mighty Baragon as a "mastodon of destruction."