monkey

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. Any of various long-tailed, medium-sized members of the order Primates, including the macaques, baboons, guenons, capuchins, marmosets, and tamarins and excluding the anthropoid apes and the prosimians.
2. n. One who behaves in a way suggestive of a monkey, as a mischievous child or a mimic.
3. n. The iron block of a pile driver.
4. n. Slang A person who is mocked, duped, or made to appear a fool: They made a monkey out of him.
5. n. Slang Drug addiction: have a monkey on one's back.
6. v. Informal To play, fiddle, trifle, or tamper with something.
7. v. Informal To behave in a mischievous or apish manner: Stop monkeying around!
8. v. To imitate or mimic; ape.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A quadrumanous mammal of the order Primates and suborder Anthropoidea; a catarrhine or platyrrhine simian; any one of the Primates except man and the lemurs; an ape, baboon, marmoset, etc. The term is very vague, and has no technical or fixed restriction. Those monkeys which have very short tails and faces are commonly called apes, most of them belonging to the higher family Simiidæ. The monkeys with long faces like dogs are usually termed baboons; they are at the bottom of the series of Old World simians, in the family Cynopithecidæ. The small bushy-tailed monkeys of America are usually known as marmosets. Excluding these, the name monkey applies mainly to long-tailed simians of either hemisphere. All the Old World monkeys, in any sense of the word, are catarrhine, and have 32 teeth, as in man. They constitute two families, Simiidæ and Cynopithecidæ. (See cuts under Cercopithecus, Catarrhina, and Diana, 2.) All the New World monkeys are platyrrhine: there are two families, Cebidæ, with 36 teeth and mostly prehensile tails, and Mididæ or marmosets, with 32 teeth and bushy non-prehensile tails. (See cuts under Cebinæ, Eriodes, and Lagothrix.) The genera of monkeys are about 35 in number, including several that are fossil. The species are particularly numerous in Africa and South America, especially in the tropical parts. There are many, however, in the warmer parts of Asia, and even up to the snow-line; a single one is found in Europe, the Barbary ape, Inuus ecaudatus. (See cut at ape.) Almost all the leading species have specific names in the vernacular as well as their technical scientific designations.
2. n. An epithet applied to any one, especially to a boy or girl, in either real or pretended disapproval: sometimes expressing endearment.
3. n. A pile-driving instrument with two handles, raised by pulleys, and guided in its descent so as to cause it to fall on the head of a pile and drive it into the ground; a fistuca; a beetlehead.
4. n. A sort of power-hammer used in ship-building for driving bolts, composed of a long pig of iron traversing in a groove, which is raised by pulleys, and let fall on the spot required.
5. n. A small crucible used in glass-making.
6. n. A certain sum of money: in the United States, $500; in Great Britain, £500: used especially in betting.
7. n. A kind of bustle formerly worn by women. See the quotation.
8. n. Same as water-monkey.
9. n. A fluid composed of two parts of chlorhydric acid (generally called spirits of salt by workmen) and one part of zinc, used in soldering. It is applied to the joints to be soldered, and acts both to prevent oxidation when heat is applied and to dissolve any oxid which may have already formed, and which would otherwise prevent the adherence of the solder.
10. n. To drink rum or other liquor.
11. To act in an idle or meddlesome manner; trifle; fool: as, don't monkey with that gun.
12. To imitate as a monkey does; ape.
13. n. In mining, an appliance for automatically gripping or letting go the rope in rope haulage.
14. n. plural In the Australian bush, a sheep-shearer's name for sheep.
15. n. A local name for the cinder-notch of the dam in an iron-making blast-furnace, through which the slag or cinder can be allowed to flow out as it accumulates in the smelting process. It is placed on the side of the furnace, and about 30 or 40 inches below the level of the twyers where the blast is introduced in furnaces of modern size.

Wiktionary

1. n. Any member of the clade Simiiformes not also of the clade Hominoidea containing humans and apes, from which they are usually, but not universally, distinguished by smaller size, a tail, and cheek pouches.
2. n. informal A mischievous child.
3. n. UK, slang Five hundred pounds sterling.
4. n. slang A person or the role of the person on the sidecar platform of motorcycle involved in sidecar racing.
5. n. slang A person with minimal intelligence and/or (bad) looks.
6. n. A face card.
7. n. slang A menial employee who does a repetitive job.
8. v. informal To meddle; to mess with; to interfere; to fiddle.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. In the most general sense, any one of the Quadrumana, including apes, baboons, and lemurs.
2. n. Any species of Quadrumana, except the lemurs.
3. n. Any one of numerous species of Quadrumana (esp. such as have a long tail and prehensile feet) exclusive of apes and baboons.
4. n. A term of disapproval, ridicule, or contempt, as for a mischievous child.
5. n. The weight or hammer of a pile driver, that is, a very heavy mass of iron, which, being raised on high, falls on the head of the pile, and drives it into the earth; the falling weight of a drop hammer used in forging.
6. n. A small trading vessel of the sixteenth century.
7. v. To act or treat as a monkey does; to ape; to act in a grotesque or meddlesome manner.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. one who is playfully mischievous
2. v. do random, unplanned work or activities or spend time idly
3. v. play around with or alter or falsify, usually secretively or dishonestly
4. n. any of various long-tailed primates (excluding the prosimians)