Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Resembling or pertaining to the genus Pithecus; belonging to the higher as distinguished from the lower apes; simian; anthropoid, as an ape. Loosely, of or pertaining to an ape; related to an ape.
  • noun An anthropoid ape; a simian.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective (Zoöl.) Of or pertaining to the genus Pithecia, or subfamily Pithecinæ, which includes the saki, ouakari, and other allied South American monkeys.
  • adjective Of or pertaining to the anthropoid apes in particular, or to the higher apes of the Old World, collectively.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Of or pertaining to the anthropoid apes
  • adjective Of or pertaining to the monkeys of genus Pithecia

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From the Ancient Greek πῐθηκοεῐδής (pithēkoeidēs, "ape-like").

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Examples

  • A traveller well known to me once proposed to breed pithecoid men who might be useful as hewers of wood and drawers of water: his idea was to put the highest races of apes to the lowest of humanity.

    The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night 2006

  • At most, they demonstrate the existence of a man whose skull may be said to revert somewhat towards the pithecoid type — just as a

    Essays 2007

  • Under whatever aspect we view this cranium, whether we regard its vertical depression, the enormous thickness of its supraciliary ridges, its sloped occiput, or its long and straight squamosal suture, we meet with ape-like characters, stamping it as the most pithecoid of human crania yet discovered.

    Essays 2007

  • In still older strata do the fossilized bones of an Ape more anthropoid, or a Man more pithecoid, than any yet known await the researches of some unborn paleontologist?

    Essays 2007

  • And indeed, though truly the most pithecoid of known human skulls, the Neanderthal cranium is by no means so isolated as it appears to be at first, but forms, in reality, the extreme term of a series leading gradually from it to the highest and best developed of human crania.

    Essays 2007

  • So large a mass of brain as this, would alone suggest that the pithecoid tendencies, indicated by this skull, did not extend deep into the organization; and this conclusion is borne out by the dimensions of the other bones of the skeleton given by Professor

    Essays 2007

  • In conclusion, I may say, that the fossil remains of Man hitherto discovered do not seem to me to take us appreciably nearer to that lower pithecoid form, by the modification of which he has, probably, become what he is.

    Essays 2007

  • The anatomical resemblance between Man and the higher Ape, so frequently cited by Darwinists as pointing to some ancestors common to both, presents an interesting problem, the proper solution of which is to be sought for in the esoteric explanation of the genesis of the pithecoid stocks.

    The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria W. Scott-Elliot

  • It is pretty clear that the resort to animal food, whether the result of the pressure of want from failure of vegetable products, or a mere taste and a desire for change and more appetizing food, is one that took place many ages ago, probably in the earliest anthropoid, if not in the latest pithecoid stage.

    Scientific American Supplement, No. 360, November 25, 1882 Various

  • In fact, it has been thought by a number of great scholars that man had not yet made his appearance upon the earth in the miocene age, and that all the marvellous chipped flints of that age belong to semi-human pithecoid apes of wonderful intelligence.

    The Human Side of Animals Royal Dixon 1923

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