• enPR: āp, IPA: /eɪp/

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".

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.

• French: singe, hominoïdé, singe anthropoïde
• German: Affe (ape or monkey), Menschenaffe (ape specifically)
• Italian: scimmia, ominide
• Portuguese: macaco, símio
• Russian: обезья́на
• Spanish: simio

• German: Affe
• Italian: scimmione
• Portuguese: macaco, primata
• Russian: обезья́на
• Spanish: simio, mono, primate

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.

• Portuguese: macaquear
• Spanish: monear

• French: singer
• German: nachäffen
• Italian: scimmiottare
• Portuguese: imitar, macaquear
• Russian: (act the ape) обезья́нничать
• Spanish: remedar, imitar

ape (not comparable)

1. (slang) Wild; crazy.

   We were ape over the new look.

   He went ape when he heard the bad news.

ape (plural apes)

1. (organic chemistry) Init of alkylphenol ethoxylate