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gibbon

gibbon

10 6.5
A small ape with no tail and very long arms that lives in Asian forests
  • noun
  • /ˈɡɪbən/
translation icon : gibón
  • At the zoo, visitors were amazed by the acrobatic moves of the playful gibbons.

Examples

  • Wild gibbons communicate with each other through loud calls that echo through the jungle.

  • So the white faced Gibbon currently exists in southern Vietnam and in Thailand.

  • We laughed at the gibbons, the chimps, and the orangutans.

    Fiction book (1990)
  • I had seen pictures of the giant pandas of Sichuan and the black gibbons of Hainan.

    Fiction book (1991)
  • Sounds of screeching gibbons, exotic birds, chattering insects, and various other wildlife echo from the jungle.

    Fiction book (1990)
  • At least five genera are accounted for: two types of macaque monkey, orangutan, langur monkey, gibbon, and Homo.

    Academic text (1991)
  • The gibbon swung effortlessly from tree to tree in the dense forest.

Synonyms

ape
vsgibbon
118 1.0

A primate without a tail, like a chimpanzee or gorilla

is a small tailless forest primate with very long arms for swinging

How Agile

gibbon
10 6.5
squirrel
232 1.0
monkey
931 1.0
lemur
34 4.2
sloth
16 2.3

Surface Forms

gibbon singular
gibbons plural

Etymology

The word gibbon comes from the French word gibbon, a name early European writers used for the long-armed apes of Asia and was probably borrowed from a local Asian name for the animal. So gibbon is simply the name that travelled into English for this small, tailless ape.