Other forms: orangutans
An orangutan is the great red-haired ape of Borneo and Sumatra. A young orangutan, orangutan habitat, protect the orangutan.
It is the most solitary of the great apes and the one that spends most of its life in trees, and the males take years to develop the wide cheek pads. All three species are critically endangered, chiefly because of palm oil plantations.
1nounorangutanA great red-haired ape of Borneo and Sumatra.
“An orangutan swung slowly through the trees of the rainforest.”
orangutan is an ape.
Malay orang hutan means forest person, from orang, a person, plus hutan, forest.
Malay
orang hutan,orang utan
Dutch
orang-oetan,orang-oetang
English, today
orangutan
Built from
Probably via Dutch orang-oetan,orang-oetang, apparently from Malay orang hutan,orang utan literally “forest man”, from orang (“person, man”) + hutan (“forest”), although as a term for the animal it is attested only recently (earlier and preferred terms being mawas and mayas). As there is originally no evidence for its usage, except occasionally literally, it must be assumed to have been regional, or a descriptive collocation used to explain the animal to early travellers. Forms in -ng are alterations after the first element, orang. The name orangutan has been used in Old Javanese texts, notably in Rāmāyaṇa and Smaradahana, in the form of uraṅutan and wuraṅutan. Its usage to refer to the apes in these texts (from as early as the 9th century) has been seen as a refutation of claims that the name orangutan originates from a European source.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA