chimpanzee

UK/t͡ʃɪmˈpæn.zi/US/t͡ʃɪmˈpæn.zi/

nounB1+Common in everyday speech and writing · #7,584 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: chimpanzees

A chimpanzee is a clever African ape with dark hair and no tail. A young chimpanzee, chimpanzees in the wild, study chimpanzees.

It is our nearest living relative along with the bonobo, and it makes and uses tools without being taught. Wild chimpanzees live in troops with politics complicated enough to have been written up for fifty years.

Definitions of chimpanzee

1nounchimpanzeeA clever African ape with dark hair and no tail.B1+
“A chimpanzee stripped a twig and fished termites out with it.”

chimpanzee is an animal.

Where it comes from

The name was recorded in 1738 and comes from a Bantu language of Angola, where it named the animal.

French
chimpanzé
English, today
chimpanzee

The first recorded use of the name chimpanzee dates to 1738. The name is derived from an unspecified bnt language of Angola (compare vif cimpenzi), probably brought to the English language via French chimpanzé.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

chimpanzee in the wild

The chimpanzee shares the genus Pan with the bonobo.
Chimpanzee
The chimpanzee is bigger and more robust than the bonobo.
Chimpanzee
Bonobos live south of the river, and thereby were separated from the ancestors of the common chimpanzee, which live north of the river.
Bonobo
Native to sub-Saharan Africa, chimpanzees and bonobos are currently both found in the Congo jungle, while only the chimpanzee is also found further north in West Africa.
Pan (genus)
Both species are listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, and in 2017 the Convention on Migratory Species selected the chimpanzee for special protection.
Pan (genus)

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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