The AI-powered English dictionary
plural apes
A primate of the clade Hominoidea, generally larger than monkeys and distinguished from them by having no tail. examples
Any such primate other than a human. examples
(derogatory) An uncivilized person. examples
One who apes; a foolish imitator. examples
third-person singular simple present apes, present participle aping or apeing, simple past and past participle aped
(intransitive) To behave like an ape. examples
(transitive) To imitate or mimic, particularly to imitate poorly. quotations examples
But there’s this difference; one is gold put to the use of paving-stones, and the other is tin polished to ape a service of silver.
1847, Emily Brontë, chapter XXI, in Wuthering Heights
It is not conceived as a mere “aping” in externals nor as an enacting in the sense of assuming a foreign role.
1961, J. A. Philip, “Mimesis in the Sophistês of Plato,”, in Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, volume 92, page 454
Every year a paper or a book appears, bemoaning the fate of economics and complaining about its attempts to ape physics.
2010, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, New York: Random House, page 180
not comparable
(slang) Wild; crazy.