Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Any of various extinct primates considered to be close relatives or ancestors of modern humans and having some characteristics of nonhuman apes. Not in scientific use.
  • noun A brawny or crude man.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A name given to a hypothetical ape-like man, or speechless primitive man, intermediate in character between the highest anthropoid apes and human beings, and conjectured by Haeckel to have been the progenitor of the human race.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun hypothetical organism formerly thought to be intermediate between apes and human beings
  • noun a person assumed to have been raised by apes

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Sam Lipsyte's third novel, The Ask, is a dark and jaded beast — the sort of book that, if it were an animal, would be a lumbering, hairy, cryptozoological ape-man with a near-crippling case of elephantiasis.

    The Ask: Summary and book reviews of The Ask by Sam Lipsyte. 2010

  • I didn't need this ape-man to lose control of his finger.

    Wrong Place, Wrong Time, Wrong Tree Nathaniel Tower 2012

  • Skill with weapons has been highly prized since the first ape-man picked up a stick and brained another ape-man with it.

    George Washington’s First War David A. Clary 2011

  • Skill with weapons has been highly prized since the first ape-man picked up a stick and brained another ape-man with it.

    George Washington’s First War David A. Clary 2011

  • Skill with weapons has been highly prized since the first ape-man picked up a stick and brained another ape-man with it.

    George Washington’s First War David A. Clary 2011

  • The way this monster is represented is not so much as an ape-man, but more animal-like.

    Bigfoot From Around The World | myFiveBest 2009

  • Bush doesn't go to the competition which has been decorated as monkeys as well as apes for centuries. my HS biology teacher who was the clever disciple of expansion caused people tend to hold in expansion as he looked really most similar to an ape-man.

    Archive 2009-12-01 admin 2009

  • Bush doesn't go to the competition which has been decorated as monkeys as well as apes for centuries. my HS biology teacher who was the clever disciple of expansion caused people tend to hold in expansion as he looked really most similar to an ape-man.

    Google Upset by Racist Michelle Obama Image | Drudge Retort admin 2009

  • Unlike other reports, this Alma is a rougher, hairier human-like creature than an ape-man.

    Bigfoot From Around The World | myFiveBest 2009

  • All the whole human drift, from the first ape-man to the last savant, is but a phantom, a flash of light and a flutter of movement across the infinite face of the starry night.

    THE HUMAN DRIFT 2010

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