pithecoid
Americanadjective
-
belonging or pertaining to the genus Pithecia and related genera, including the saki monkeys.
-
(loosely) apelike; monkeylike.
Etymology
Origin of pithecoid
1860–65; < New Latin pithēc ( us ) ape (< Greek píthēkos ) + -oid
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.
After writing a book to establish the descent of man from apes, Professor Huxley is obliged to confess that "the fossil remains of man hitherto discovered do not seem to take us appreciably nearer to that lower pithecoid form, by the modification of which he has, probably, become what he is."
From Project Gutenberg
Some of these believe themselves sprung from trees, as if they had still reminiscences of the arboreal habits of a pithecoid ancestry.
From Project Gutenberg
Nowadays Sir William is generally remembered, when he is, because he happened to be Oscar's father, or because he was, as an outraged Victorian put it, a "pithecoid person of extraordinary sensuality."
From Time Magazine Archive
But no amount of such suppositions or imaginations will furnish Science with the scantiest apology for a foothold, nor can the germs of language attributed to pithecoid communities or the sagest of their patriarchs, be considered as of any greater value than the speeches put into the mouths of the animals by �sop or "Uncle Remus."
From Project Gutenberg
He energetically rejected all attempts to find “pithecoid” characters in the prehistoric remains of man.
From Project Gutenberg
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.