ape / āp/ • n. a large primate (families Pongidae and Hylobatidae) that lacks a tail, including the gorilla, chimpanzees, orangutan, and gibbons. See also great ape, gibbon. ∎  used in names of macaque monkeys with short tails, e.g., Barbary ape. ∎  (in general use) any monkey. ∎  an unintelligent or clumsy person.• v. [tr.] imitate the behavior or manner of (someone or something), esp. in an absurd or unthinking way.PHRASES: go ape inf. express wild excitement or anger.

ape Term usually applied to the anthropoid apes (primates) that are the closest relatives of humans. There are three great apes – chimpanzee, gorilla and orang-utan – and one lesser, the gibbon. An ape differs from a monkey in being larger, having no visible tail, and in possessing a more complex brain. Two monkeys are also called ‘apes’ – the Barbary ape of n Africa and Gibraltar, and the black ape of Celebes.

APE

APE (Heb. קוֹף), animal enumerated among the precious articles that Solomon imported (i Kings 10:22, ii Chron. 9:21). The word kof derives from the Sanskrit kapi, meaning a tailless ape. In rabbinic literature, however, it refers both to the tailed and the tailless species. Mention is made of the fact that they were employed to keep houses free of creeping things (Tosef., bk 8:17), and they were even trained for domestic uses (Tosef., Er. 3:12). The Sifra (51:4), basing itself upon Leviticus 11:27, enumerates it among the animals forbidden to be eaten. In the Mishnah (Kil. 8:5) there is discussion of whether the laws of ritual uncleanness which apply to a human corpse also apply to creatures called adonei ha-sadeh ("the lords of the field") which some scholars have identified with chimpanzees.

bibliography:

Lewysohn, Zool, 64 ff.; F.S. Bodenheimer, Ha-Ḥai be-Arẓot ha-Mikra, 2 (1956), index; J. Feliks, Animal World of the Bible (1962), 49. add. bibliography: Feliks, Ha-Ẓome'aḥ, 275.

[Jehuda Feliks]

ape before the introduction of monkey, the word for a monkey, and afterwards still sometimes so used, especially in poetic and literary sources, and when the animal is taken as typifying the ability to imitate human behaviour, especially in an absurd or unthinking way.
an ape's an ape, a varlet's a varlet, though they be clad in silk or scarlet whatever the outward show, the essential quality of a person or thing remains unchanged. A varlet was formerly a menial servant, but the word took on the sense of ‘scoundrel’ or ‘rogue’. Scarlet was the colour of the official or ceremonial dress of various dignitaries, including judges. The saying is recorded in English from the mid 16th century, although the Greek writer Lucian, of the 2nd century ad, has ‘an ape is an ape…even if it has gold insignia.’

See also naked ape.

ape A name originally (in medieval times) applied to the Barbary macaque (Macaca sylvanus) of North Africa (as were the Latin word simia and Greek pithecus) and, by extension, applied to other primates as these were made known in Europe. As long-tailed monkeys (‘tailed apes’, or cercopitheci) became better known, ‘ape’ came to mean primarily ‘tailless ape’, and today commonly denotes a member of the Hominoidea, comprising lesser apes (gibbons) and great apes (orang-utan, gorilla, chimpanzee, and, in some usages, human).