Definition of "ape" []

• Any of various large, tailless Old World primates of the family Pongidae, including the chimpanzee, gorilla, gibbon, and orangutan. (noun)
• A monkey. (noun)
• A mimic or imitator. (noun)
• Informal A clumsy or boorish person. (noun)
• To mimic slavishly but often with an absurd result. See Synonyms at imitate. (verb-transitive)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "May be they are veridical observations of some enormous rare ape mistaken for an ˜ape - man™ or may be just erroneous observations of sociopaths in Yak coats?"
• "Chuen of the Maya calendar, which corresponds to the day Ozomatli, the ape, in the Aztec calendar, seems to indicate that the singular head of C is that of an _ape_, whose lateral nasal cavity (peculiar to the American ape or monkey) is occasionally represented plainly in the hieroglyph picture."
• "The project was started by the philosophers Peter Singer and Paola Cavalieri, who argued that the ape is the closest genetic relative to humans — that it displays emotions such as love, fear, anxiety and jealousy — and should be protected by similar laws."