Barbary ape
1
8.9
- noun
- UK
:
mono de Barbary
- Researchers studied the behavior of the Barbary ape in its natural habitat in northwestern Africa.
Examples
-
Those excavations produced another surprising find—the skeleton of a Barbary ape, a type of macaque from southern Iberia, on the Gibraltar peninsula.
Academic text (2011) -
And why 700 years ago, AIaric Fury adopted a Barbary ape as his crest.
-
Lizzie was a Barbary ape.
Fiction book (2001) -
The Barbary ape is a rare species found in the forests of Gibraltar.
-
During our visit to the zoological park, we saw a Barbary ape climbing the rocks.
Synonyms
5
9.6
A medium-sized monkey with a short tail that lives in rocky places in Asia and Africa
A monkey without a tail that lives on cliffs and in forests in northwest Africa and Gibraltar
Surface Forms
Morphology
The compound is partly transparent: 'Barbary' signals a geographic origin and 'ape' denotes a primate, so a learner who knows both words can infer it refers to a primate associated with the Barbary region. However, the precise biological details (that it is a tailless macaque, its specific range in North Africa and Gibraltar, and the taxonomic misnomer of 'ape') are not predictable from the constituents, requiring extra knowledge.
Etymology
Barbary ape got its name from the old name for northwest Africa, the 'Barbary Coast', where people saw these tailless monkeys and called them apes because they had no tails. So today Barbary ape means the tailless 'macaque', a kind of monkey, found in northwest Africa and Gibraltar.