monkeys

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mon·key

(mŭng′kē)

n. pl. mon·keys

a. Any of various tailed primates of the suborder Anthropoidea, including the macaques, baboons, capuchins, and marmosets, and excluding the apes.

b. A nonhuman ape. Not in scientific use.

2. One who behaves in a way suggestive of a monkey, as a mischievous child or a mimic.

3. The iron block of a pile driver.

4. Slang A person who is mocked, duped, or made to appear a fool: They made a monkey out of him.

5. Offensive Slang Used as a disparaging term for a person with dark skin.

v. mon·keyed, mon·key·ing, mon·keys

v.intr. Informal

1. To play, fiddle, trifle, or tamper with something: Who was monkeying with my cell phone?

2. To behave in a mischievous or apish manner: Stop monkeying around!

v.tr.

To imitate or mimic; ape.

Idiom:

monkey on one's back

1. An addiction to a drug.

2. An object of persistent worry or obsession.

[Perhaps ultimately from Middle Low German Moneke, name of a young ape in the beast epic Reynke de Vos ("Reynard the Fox"), shortening of Simoneke, diminutive (used in punning reference to Latin sīmia, ape, monkey; see simian) of the Middle High German name Simon (equivalent to English Simeon Simon).]

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

monkeys

macaque - Based on Bantu kaku, "monkey," and ma, denoting a plural, translating to "some monkeys."
monkey business - A transfer of the tricks of monkeys to human behavior.
barrel of monkeys - Monkeys are usually a source of merriment, so if one had a barrelful of them, one supposes this to be quite hilarious; a group of monkeys is actually called a troop.
see monkeys - To be overcome by the heat while working.

References in classic literature ?

Her knowledge of monkeys was slight, but she fancied they looked with favour on bananas.

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"I learned dot trick in Mogoung Tanjong when I was collecting liddle monkeys for some peoples in Berlin.

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Whoever owned it could call three times upon the Winged Monkeys, who would obey any order they were given.

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He asked me, "what my thoughts and speculations were, while I lay in the monkey's paw; how I liked the victuals he gave me; his manner of feeding; and whether the fresh air on the roof had sharpened my stomach." He desired to know, "what I would have done upon such an occasion in my own country." I told his majesty, "that in Europe we had no monkeys, except such as were brought for curiosity from other places, and so small, that I could deal with a dozen of them together, if they presumed to attack me.

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We do not drink where the monkeys drink; we do not go where the monkeys go; we do not hunt where they hunt; we do not die where they die.

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She had felt sure from the first that her son's pet monkey was no other than Prince Alphege, and she longed to put an end to him.

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His eye was caught by a building of pale-blue tin, stencilled "Calvinist Chapel," before whose shuttered windows an Italian organ-grinder .with a petticoated monkey was playing "Dolly Grey-"

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A MAN of humble birth and no breading, who held a high political office, was passing through a forest, when he met a Monkey.

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Once when he was sitting on his garden wall, smoking a pipe in the evening, an Italian organ- grinder came round with a monkey on a string.

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Then he stooped and gathered a handful of earth, and murmured some words over it, after which he threw the earth in my face, saying as he did so, "Quit the form of a man, and assume that of a monkey." This done, he vanished, and I was in the likeness of an ape, and in a country I had never seen before.

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JUPITER held a baby show, open to all animals, and a Monkey entered her hideous cub for a prize, but Jupiter only laughed at her.

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Sara she was called, a small, green monkey from South America, who seemed to have been born hysterical and indignant, and with no appreciation of humour.