ape
Americannoun
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apes
plural
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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).
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(loosely) any primate except humans.
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an imitator; mimic.
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Informal. a big, ugly, clumsy person.
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Disparaging and Offensive. (used as a slur against a member of a racial or ethnic minority group, especially a Black person.)
verb (used with object)
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apes,
present (3rd person singular)
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aped,
past participle, past
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aping
present participle
adjective
noun
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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
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(not in technical use) any monkey
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an imitator; mimic
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informal a coarse, clumsy, or rude person
verb
Sensitive Note
See simianization.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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apesimple
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apessimple
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have apedperfect
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has apedperfect
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am apingprogressive
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are apingprogressive
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is apingprogressive
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have been apingperfect progressive
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has been apingperfect progressive
Past
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apedsimple
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had apedperfect
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was apingprogressive
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were apingprogressive
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had been apingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of ape
First recorded before 900; Middle English; Old English apa; cognate with Old Saxon apo, Old Norse api, Old High German affo ( German Affe ); further origin uncertain
Explanation
To ape someone is to imitate them, often in a mocking way. Most people don't like being aped. To ape is to imitate, but it can mean a few different things. One type of aping is to blatantly imitate something or someone in every way. That's considered a bad thing because it's so unoriginal — it's a rip-off. Another kind of aping is like a caricature — to ape in this way is a way of making fun or spoofing someone. Either way, you probably don't want to be accused of aping.
Vocabulary lists containing ape
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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.
See Examples For:
Nicknamed Novita, the ape shown in footage released by a conservation group is among dozens that have been rescued from wildfires burning across parts of Sumatra and Borneo in recent months.
From Barron's ● Oct. 9, 2026
The great ape, which was discovered by a farmer, was rescued and given emergency treatment for hypoxia, but later died.
From BBC ● Sep. 23, 2026
One naming gambit, though, might be close to a sure thing—when companies brazenly ape the theme du jour.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 11, 2026
This allowed them to estimate how different ape groups were related and when their evolutionary lineages separated.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 24, 2026
As the salmon was being served, Ser Axell Florent had entertained the table with the tale of a Targaryen princeling who kept an ape as a pet.
From "A Dance with Dragons" by George R. R. Martin
Indonesian wildlife authorities rescued 46 of the apes, which are critically endangered, before fires tore through their habitat in August and September.
From BBC ● Oct. 11, 2026
Lar gibbons are small apes covered in blonde or dark brown fur, with a distinctive ring of white fur around their faces.
From BBC ● Aug. 13, 2026
Masripithecus shows that apes were already living in North Africa during the Early Miocene.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 24, 2026
They warn of a growing multi-million-dollar trade in endangered animals, including apes smuggled through war-torn Myanmar to feed demand among wealthy Indians seeking exotic status symbols to flaunt on social media.
From Barron's
But we are all of us—us whales, us apes, us people—too closely related.
From "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan
In the 1960s, a primitive chatbot that mindlessly aped a therapist had people pouring their hearts out to it.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 29, 2025
His misguided approach - often aped on the Accidentally Partridge social media account, which shares cringeworthy clips of public figures - is "provocative" but, Coogan hopes, "never mean-spirited."
From BBC ● Sep. 30, 2025
Eggers’ “Nosferatu” succeeds because the director’s alterations to Henrik Galeen’s original 1922 screenplay, aped from Stoker’s novel with a few tweaks, are minimal.
From Salon ● Dec. 24, 2024
“I aped a city skyline,” says Cohen about the collection of screens, “with ‘buildings’ of different heights, to ape New York.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 17, 2024
“Yeah,” I aped, and picked up the shovel.
From "Dead End in Norvelt" by Jack Gantos
So at the same time as worrying about their male classmates "bottling things up", girls are also feeling scared about how some boys and men - aping Manosphere behaviours - might act.
From BBC ● Apr. 12, 2026
Though Hale’s crude aping of Harold Lloyd is disappointing, the rest of the cast acquit themselves admirably—no one more so than La Plante as the sympathetic heroine.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 28, 2025
The plan is to craft something “safe and fun” that will “bring joy” to its users, especially “women and gay people,” at a time when other social media executives are aping norms of reactionary ultramasculinity.
From Slate ● Feb. 11, 2025
Even so, it's not getting any real Oscar buzz, despite Jim Parsons' aping Shirley MacLaine in "Terms of Endearment."
From Salon ● Dec. 11, 2022
The deweys with their magnificent teeth ran out from Number 7 and danced a little jig around the befuddled Shadrack, then cut into a wild aping of his walk, his song and his bell-ringing.
From "Sula" by Toni Morrison
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
