Neanderthal
Americanadjective
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of or relating to Neanderthal man.
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(often lowercase) primitive, unenlightened, or reactionary; culturally or intellectually backward.
noun
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(often lowercase)
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an unenlightened or ignorant person; barbarian.
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a reactionary; a person with very old-fashioned ideas.
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adjective
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relating to or characteristic of Neanderthal man
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primitive; uncivilized
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informal ultraconservative; reactionary
noun
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An extinct variety of human that lived throughout Europe and in parts of western Asia and northern Africa during the late Pleistocene Epoch, until about 30,000 years ago. Neanderthals had a stocky build and large skulls with thick eyebrow ridges and big teeth. They usually lived in caves, made flaked stone tools, and were the earliest humans known to bury their dead. Neanderthals were either a subspecies of modern humans (Homo sapiens neanderthalensis) or a separate, closely related species (Homo neanderthalensis). They coexisted with early modern humans (Cro-Magnons) for several thousand years before becoming extinct, but are not generally believed to have interbred with them.
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See also Mousterian
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The term Neanderthal is sometimes used to refer to a person who is thought to have primitive or unenlightened ideas: “I tried talking politics to Joe, but he's a real Neanderthal.”
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Derived Forms
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Nouns
Etymology
Origin of Neanderthal
First recorded in 1860–65; after Neanderthal, valley in Germany, near Düsseldorf, where evidence of Neanderthal man was first found
Explanation
A neanderthal is someone who is rude and not very smart. If your brother interrupts your garden party by spraying your guests with a hose, you can call him a neanderthal. When neanderthal is spelled with a lower-case n, it means a cretin or a dolt — a rough, mean, and slightly foolish person. If you spell it with a capital N, it means an extinct species of human being, and it's the root of the lower-case version. The word Neanderthal is German, named for the Neander Valley where human fossils have been found, and around 1926 neanderthal became popular British slang for a "big, brutish, stupid person."
Vocabulary lists containing neanderthal
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
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For much of the novel, we inhabit the consciousness of Lok, a young male Neanderthal who hasn’t yet acquired the habits of abstraction on which narrative usually depends.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 22, 2026
In such a scheme, Neanderthal DNA can be transmitted widely through the ordinary chromosomes, while the Neanderthal X chromosome circulates less easily, since a father passes it on only to his daughters.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 7, 2026
A scene is staged in which the Neanderthal “Romeo” wins the heart of a Sapiens “Juliet.”
From Science Daily ● Jul. 7, 2026
In Belgium, the site of Goyet yielded the remains of four Neanderthal females and two immature individuals.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 7, 2026
According to the Interbreeding Theory, when Sapiens spread into Neanderthal lands, Sapiens bred with Neanderthals until the two populations merged.
From "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" by Yuval Noah Harari
Its premise—the first, disastrous encounter between a family of placid Neanderthals and a ruthless “new people,” Homo sapiens—is simple, though its execution is anything but.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 22, 2026
If Sapiens women had, in fact, regularly entered Neanderthal groups, we would expect to see a recent genetic signal of Sapiens ancestry persisting among the last Neanderthals.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 7, 2026
It assumes that the same genetic mechanism would still have been at work nearly 200,000 years later, at the time of the final contacts between Sapiens and Neanderthals.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 7, 2026
To see in Neanderthals a signal compatible with greater female mobility therefore points to a deep behavioral tendency, one that runs from primates to human societies.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 7, 2026
Imagine how things might have turned out had the Neanderthals or Denisovans survived alongside Homo sapiens.
From "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" by Yuval Noah Harari
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
