featherless biped
Syllables: feath·er·less bi·pedUK/ˌfɛðələs ˈbaɪpɛd//ˌfɛðəɹləs ˈbaɪˌpɛd/
featherless biped noun: a human being.
Noun
featherless biped (plural featherless bipeds)
- A human being.
- The schoolmen—or rather certain of the schoolmen—for nothing is much shallower than to speak of all those disputants as one school—defined woman, "a featherless biped vehemently addicted to jealousy." Whether she is more featherless than the male, can be decided at the trifling expense of time...1863 June 27, [Charles Reade], “Very Hard Cash. Chapter XVI.”, in Charles Dickens, editor, All the Year Round. A Weekly Journal. […], volume IX, number 218, London: […] Chapman and Hall, […], →OCLC...
- A boy should be directed and restrained; while to a man should be given the range of a large discretion. But the college student is often neither a boy nor a man. […] Reference is here made, of course, to that species of featherless biped which at times, especially when taken alone, seems to show...1889 July, Charles Kendall Adams, “Discipline in American Colleges”, in Lloyd Bryce, editor, The North American Review, volume CXLIX, number CCCXCII, New York, N.Y.: [s.n.], →ISSN, →OCLC, page 15
- Synonyms:
- naked ape
Examples of featherless biped in a sentence
- Aristotle's characterization of humans as featherless bipeds is an attempt at a demarcation criterion.1996, Steven W. Horst, “Causal and Stipulative Definitions of Semantic Terms”, in Symbols, Computation, and Intentionality: A Critique of...
- But it wasn't until July 17, 1995, that Forbes magazine named him the richest featherless biped on the planet, with a net worth just shy of $13 billion.2008 June 16, Dan Tynan, “Bill Gates: 10 Memorable Moments”, in ABC News, archived from the original on 15 Feb 2011:
Synonyms of featherless biped
Forms of featherless biped
| plural | featherless bipeds |
|---|
Origin of featherless biped
From the dialogue The Statesman by Plato (427–347 B.C.E.): “λέγω δὴ δεῖν τότε εὐθὺς τὸ πεζὸν τῷ δίποδι πρὸς τὸ τετράπουν γένος διανεῖμαι, κατιδόντα δὲ τἀνθρώπινον ἔτι μόνῳ τῷ πτηνῷ συνειληχὸς τὴν δίποδα ἀγέλην πάλιν τῷ ψιλῷ καὶ τῷ πτεροφυεῖ τέμνειν, […] [I say, then, that we ought at that time to have divided walking animals immediately into biped and quadruped, then seeing that the human race falls into the same division with the feathered creatures and no others, we must again divide the biped class into featherless and feathered, […]]”.
Questions about featherless biped
- What does featherless biped mean?
- Featherless biped means a human being.
- How do you use featherless biped in a sentence?
- Aristotle's characterization of humans as featherless bipeds is an attempt at a demarcation criterion.
- What part of speech is featherless biped?
- Featherless biped is a noun.
- How do you pronounce featherless biped?
- Featherless biped is pronounced /ˌfɛðələs ˈbaɪpɛd/ (UK).
- What is the plural of featherless biped?
- The plural of featherless biped is featherless bipeds.
Words near featherless biped in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: featherless biped (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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-featherless biped.oga.
Cite this entry: “featherless biped.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/featherless_biped. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.