ape
Anthropology, Zoology. any member of the superfamily Hominoidea, the two extant branches of which are the lesser apes (gibbons) and the great apes (humans, chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans).: See also catarrhine.
(loosely) any primate except humans.
an imitator; mimic.
Informal. a big, ugly, clumsy person.
Disparaging and Offensive. (used as a slur against a member of a racial or ethnic minority group, especially a Black person.)
Slang. (usually in the phrase go ape)
violently emotional: When she threatened to leave him, he went ape.
extremely enthusiastic (often followed by over or for): They go ape over old rock music.We were all ape for the new movie trailer.
Origin of ape
1usage note For ape
Other words from ape
- ape·like, adjective
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024
How to use ape in a sentence
His first recordings were a classic case of trying too hard, aping the Bluebird beat.
The Stacks: How Leonard Chess Helped Make Muddy Waters | Alex Belth | August 2, 2014 | THE DAILY BEASTThe person aping me seemed to be a bored young male, possibly living in a suburb.
Because “incidents [like Guwahati] are a result of blindly aping the West.”
A Nation of Onlookers: India’s Violence Against Women and America’s Guns | Dilip D’Souza | December 22, 2012 | THE DAILY BEASTThe blind aping, of course, that erodes our ever-worshipful Indian culture and drives our ever-respectful men to rape.
A Nation of Onlookers: India’s Violence Against Women and America’s Guns | Dilip D’Souza | December 22, 2012 | THE DAILY BEASTWe can spend our free time campaigning against sex trafficking, or be a drug-soaked party girl aping the lap dancers.
Varna is such a town as only could have been devised by a nomadic race aping the habits of civilized nations.
The British Expedition to the Crimea | William Howard RussellThe usual meaning of the word to the Greek, as to the modern, seems to be little more than an aping or mimicking.
Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance | Donald Lemen ClarkIt is sound, perhaps it may even be fine sound, yet it signifies nothing: it is as the painted face aping true beauty.
Spirit and Music | H. Ernest HuntVal leaned back in her chair, wondering if Julia was annoyed at Scherer's aping of Ethan.
The Open Question | Elizabeth RobinsIn Washington the servants are blacks; irresponsible, childlike, aping the vanities of the white people.
As A Chinaman Saw Us | Anonymous
British Dictionary definitions for ape
/ (eɪp) /
any of various primates, esp those of the family Pongidae, in which the tail is very short or absent: See anthropoid ape See also great ape
(not in technical use) any monkey
an imitator; mimic
US informal a coarse, clumsy, or rude person
(tr) to imitate
Origin of ape
1Derived forms of ape
- apelike, adjective
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
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