apache
- a Parisian gangster, rowdy, or ruffian.
Origin of apache
Apache
- a member of an Athabaskan people of the southwestern U.S.
- any of the several Athabaskan languages of Arizona and the Rio Grande basin.
- Military. a two-man U.S. Army helicopter designed to attack enemy armor with rockets or a 30mm gun and equipped for use in bad weather and in darkness.
Origin of Apache
Examples from the Web for apaches
Contemporary Examples
But the Apaches are short range and need maintenance troops to deploy with them into a location within Iraq itself.
One pilot friend in Zwara pointed out that just “two Apaches,” attack helicopters, would intimidate the militias into a ceasefire.
Earlier this year, army Apaches shot up several convoys that refused to stop while navigating mountainous dunes near the border.
Apaches used what was once a marshy ciénaga as a water hole for centuries.
Not long after the Spanish conquistadores explored the region for gold, they began snatching Apaches and other natives as slaves.
Historical Examples
By the time he had gained the shelter a dozen Apaches were firing at him.
When the West Was YoungFrederick R. Bechdolt
To him the Bruncknow house meant shelter from the Apaches; that was all.
When the West Was YoungFrederick R. Bechdolt
At once the Apaches sallied forth from their cover in full cry after him.
When the West Was YoungFrederick R. Bechdolt
Many promises had been made to the Apaches but none had been kept.
When the West Was YoungFrederick R. Bechdolt
And during all the rest of that afternoon he lay there standing off the Apaches.
When the West Was YoungFrederick R. Bechdolt
apache
- a Parisian gangster or ruffian
Word Origin
Apache
- plural Apaches or Apache a member of a North American Indian people, formerly nomadic and warlike, inhabiting the southwestern US and N Mexico
- the language of this people, belonging to the Athapascan group of the Na-Dene phylum
Word Origin
Word Origin and History for apaches
Apache
1745, from American Spanish (1598), probably from Yavapai (a Yuman language) 'epache "people." Sometimes derived from Zuni apachu "enemy" (cf. F.W. Hodge, "American Indians," 1907), but this seems to have been the Zuni name for the Navajo.
French journalistic sense of "Parisian gangster or thug" first attested 1902. Apache dance was the World War I-era equivalent of 1990s' brutal "slam dancing." Fenimore Cooper's Indian novels were enormously popular in Europe throughout the 19c., and comparisons of Cooper's fictional Indian ways in the wilderness and underworld life in European cities go back to Dumas' "Les Mohicans de Paris" (1854-1859). It is probably due to the imitations of Cooper (amounting almost to plagiarisms) by German author Karl May (1842-1912) that Apaches replaced Mohicans in popular imagination. Also cf. Mohawk.
Apaches
A tribe of Native Americans who live in the southwestern United States. Geronimo was an Apache.