Neanderthal

American  

[nee-an-der-thawl, -tawl, -tahl, ney-ahn-der-tahl] / niˈæn dərˌθɔl, -ˌtɔl, -ˌtɑl, neɪˈɑn dərˌtɑl /

Also Neandertal

adjective

1. of or relating to Neanderthal man.

2. (often lowercase) primitive, unenlightened, or reactionary; culturally or intellectually backward.

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noun

• Neanderthals
  plural

1. Neanderthal man.

2. (often lowercase)

   1. an unenlightened or ignorant person; barbarian.

   2. a reactionary; a person with very old-fashioned ideas.

Neanderthal British  

/ nɪˈændəˌtɑːl /

adjective

1. relating to or characteristic of Neanderthal man

2. primitive; uncivilized

3. informal ultraconservative; reactionary

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noun

1. a person showing any such characteristics

Neanderthal Scientific  

/ nē-ăn′dər-thôl′,-tôl′ /

1. 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.

2. See also Mousterian

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Neanderthal Cultural  

1. The ancient and now extinct relatives of modern humans. Neanderthals lived in Europe about 150,000 years ago and were the earliest form of the human species, Homo sapiens.

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Discover More

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.”

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• Neanderthaler
  noun

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• Neanderthals
  plural

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."

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

Neanderthal Neanderthals

The amount detected in Neanderthal samples was similar to levels found in western chimpanzees, which use insects to supplement their diets on the savanna, particularly during droughts.

From Science Daily ● Aug. 27, 2026

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

Their child does indeed receive Neanderthal DNA in many of its chromosomes.

From Science Daily ● Jul. 7, 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

It turned out that 1–4 per cent of the unique human DNA of modern populations in the Middle East and Europe is Neanderthal DNA.

From "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" by Yuval Noah Harari

Although Neanderthals and Denisovans later disappeared, portions of their genomes survived in their modern human descendants.

From Science Daily ● Aug. 1, 2026

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

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

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

The use of such lists goes back to the days of antiquity; for all we know there were well-organized Neanderthals jotting their daily schedules on the walls of caves.

From "The Long-Lost Home" by Maryrose Wood