Barbary ape

American  

noun

1. a tailless macaque, Macaca sylvanus, of mountain ranges in northwestern Africa, now greatly reduced in number: a small, managed colony of unknown origin is maintained on the Rock of Gibraltar.

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Barbary ape British  

noun

1. a tailless macaque, Macaca sylvana , that inhabits rocky cliffs and forests in NW Africa and Gibraltar: family Cercopithecidae , order Primates

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Etymology

Origin of Barbary ape

First recorded in 1870–75

Example Sentences

Was it a bird, a woman, an Afghan hound, a Barbary ape, a cruel hoax, a Communist plot, or Superman?

From Time Magazine Archive

"A Barbary ape could have this position and awe people," he says.

From Time Magazine Archive

From Gibraltar came a Barbary ape, the only native European monkey.

From Time Magazine Archive

Barbary ape, a tailless monkey of gregarious habits, native of the mountainous parts of Barbary, and of which there is a colony on the Rock of Gibraltar, the only one in Europe.

From The Nuttall Encyclopædia Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge by Nuttall, P. Austin

An impudent Barbary ape Once tried on a lady's new cape.

From Poems for Pale People A Volume of Verse by Ranck, Edwin Carty