Words · Rare
aped
4 letters · 4 distinct letters
A form of ape.
- verb
imitate uncritically and in every aspect
Her little brother apes her behavior
- verb
represent in or produce a caricature of
The drawing caricatured the President
- noun
any of various primates with short tails or no tail at all
- noun
someone who copies the words or behavior of another
- noun
person who resembles a nonhuman primate
Word history
History of ape
From Middle English ape, from Old English apa (“ape, monkey”), from Proto West Germanic *apō, from Proto Germanic *apô (“monkey, ape”), possibly derived from Proto Indo European *h₂ep (“water”), compare Proto Celtic *abū (“river”) (hence English place name Avon, Irish abha, Welsh afon), if the word originally referred to a "water sprite". Traditionally assumed to be an ancient loanword instead, ultimately probably from an unidentified non Indo European language of regions in Africa or Asia where monkeys are native.
From Wiktionary, under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 4.0
Why this word counts
- Where it comes from
- Listed in the English Speller Database at size 35: the core list of everyday words.
- How common it is
- Rarer than once in ten million words.
- In the spelling bee
- Daily answer A standard word with a definition we can show, so it can be a daily answer.