Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Having arms or armlike appendages.
  • intransitive verb To move by swinging with the arms from one hold to another, as certain apes do.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • In botany, having widely spreading branches arranged in alternate pairs, or decussate; furnished with brachia.
  • In zoology: Having brachia of any kind; brachiferous. Specifically, of or pertaining to the Brachiata.

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

  • adjective (Bot.) Having branches in pairs, decussated, all nearly horizontal, and each pair at right angles with the next, as in the maple and lilac.

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

  • verb intransitive To move like a brachiator; to swing from branch to branch, advance by brachiation.
  • adjective Having decussate branches.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective having arms or armlike appendages
  • verb swing from one hold to the next
  • adjective having widely spreading paired branches

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Latin brācchiātus, from brācchium, arm. V., from New Latin brāchiāre, brāchiāt-, from brācchium; see brachium.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Back-formation from brachiator.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin brachiatus, from brachium ‘arm, branch’.

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Examples

  • Kitty has promised her 11-year-old daughter, Marina, money toward her Girl Scout camping trip if she will teach her brother how to “brachiate.”

    Anything to reach Ryan 2004

  • So, did you walk to this party or did you brachiate?

    Responses to Real Manhood 2004

  • Around the circular pit were crowded all the races of Garden, or rather, all those races which had not been ex­terminated resisting the evil Wizards: the hooded Druids, brachiate tree dwellers from the Great Forest, a band of fuzzies in their bright orange robes, many lizard soldiers hissing and laughing and shouting, stubby little Marsh Folk, and hundreds of mutants.

    Prayers To Broken Stones Simmons, Dan 1990

  • Around the circular pit were crowded all the races of Garden, or rather, all those races which had not been ex­terminated resisting the evil Wizards: the hooded Druids, brachiate tree dwellers from the Great Forest, a band of fuzzies in their bright orange robes, many lizard soldiers hissing and laughing and shouting, stubby little Marsh Folk, and hundreds of mutants.

    Prayers To Broken Stones Simmons, Dan 1990

  • The comparison mortgage rate cushing longan clemenceau to pushball uranus diagrammatically you so that it can shagbark them if brachiate for an convocation.

    Rational Review 2009

  • "The missiles hit their target display the effective power of the brachiate forces."

    xml's Blinklist.com 2008

  • Venezuela spent $4.4 1000000000 in weapons purchases from 2003 to 2006 to modernize its brachiate forces, according to a inform by the U.S.

    xml's Blinklist.com 2008

  • We've all descended from a common ancestor, but, as Homo sapiens, we no longer brachiate through trees and have long abandoned our stone tools for Blackberrys and iPods.

    Ethical Technology 2008

Comments

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  • from Hull Zero Three by Greg Bear:

    "Don't look now, but we're brachiating."

    "In public?"

    June 17, 2013