ape
see also: APE
Pronunciation Etymology 1

From Middle English ape, from Old English apa, from Proto-West Germanic *apō, from Proto-Germanic *apô, possibly derived from Proto-Indo-European *h₂ep-, compare Proto-Celtic *abū, if the word originally referred to a "water sprite".

Noun

ape (plural apes)

  1. A primate of the clade Hominoidea, generally larger than monkeys and distinguished from them by having no tail.
    • 1528 October 12 (Gregorian calendar), William Tyndale, “William Tyndale other wise Called William Hychins vnto the Reader”, in The Obediẽce of a Christen Man […], [Antwerp]: [Johannes Hoochstraten], →OCLC ↗, folio xix, recto ↗:
      Of vvhat texte thou proveſt hell / vvill a nother prove purgatory / a nother lymbo patrum / and a nother the aſſumpcion of oure ladi: And a nother ſhall prove of the ſame texte that an Ape hath a tayle.
  2. Any such primate other than a human.
  3. (derogatory) An uncivilized person.
  4. One who apes; a foolish imitator.
Translations Translations Verb

ape (apes, present participle aping; simple past and past participle aped)

  1. (intransitive) To behave like an ape.
  2. (transitive) To imitate or mimic, particularly to imitate poorly.
    • 1847, Emily Brontë, chapter XXI, in Wuthering Heights:
      But there’s this difference; one is gold put to the use of paving-stones, and the other is tin polished to ape a service of silver.
    • 1961, J. A. Philip, “Mimesis in the Sophistês of Plato,”, in Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, volume 92, page 454:
      It is not conceived as a mere “aping” in externals nor as an enacting in the sense of assuming a foreign role.
Translations
  • Portuguese: macaquear
  • Spanish: monear
Translations Adjective

ape (not comparable)

  1. (slang) Wild; crazy.
    We were ape over the new look.
    He went ape when he heard the bad news.

APE
Noun

ape (plural apes)

  1. (organic chemistry) Init of alkylphenol ethoxylate



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