Word.ws English Dictionary

apess

apess noun: a female ape.

Noun

apess (plural apesses)

  1. (rare) A female ape.
    • Yet, though his limbs with pile were rough, / And though his tail was long enough / […] / Th’ apesses [he] treated with disdain[.]1865, Richard Francis Burton, “Dirge.”, in Stone Talk (Λιθοφωνημα / Lithophonema): Being Some of the Marvellous Sayings of a Petral Portion of Fleet Street, London, to One Doctor Polyglott, Ph.D....
    • I must run over & see you some day. Why not you & Mʳˢ Darwin run over here, when you have finished your Book—you can study my little Apes & Apesses—Kindest regards to Mʳˢ Darwin & thanks for her note—Always yours Affecˡʸ / W D Fox1870 November 18, William Darwin Fox, letter to Charles Darwin

Examples of apess in a sentence

  • Suddenly then he rose, and thinking scorn of his fellows / Longed to be quit of them all, his Apess specially.1884, The Spectator, volume 57, Poetry. In the Beginning., page 1173:
  • Some of them display a mysterious tendency to fall near the spot where the apess sits weeping over the children.1923, Paul Rosenfeld, Musical Chronicle (1917–1923), page 81:
  • In negresses and in anthropoid apesses, the index finger is often longer.1939, James Bridie, One Way of Living, page 196:
  • I dunno; do apesses screech more than male orangutans 'n' gorillae?1998 April 20, Geoff Miller, “Re: The Tuneless Whistler -- a trial of patience!”, in alt.peeves (Usenet), message-ID...

Forms of apess

pluralapesses

Origin of apess

From ape + -ess.

Questions about apess

What does apess mean?
Apess means a female ape.
How do you use apess in a sentence?
Suddenly then he rose, and thinking scorn of his fellows / Longed to be quit of them all, his Apess specially.
What part of speech is apess?
Apess is a noun.
What is the plural of apess?
The plural of apess is apesses.

Words near apess in the dictionary

  1. apesaults
  2. Apesh
  3. apeshit
  4. apesona
  5. apesonas
  6. apess
  7. apesses
  8. apetaloid
  9. apetalose
  10. apetalous
  11. apetalousness

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: apess (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “apess.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/apess. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.