pithecanthropoid
pithecanthropoid noun: one of the first species of hominid that is considered truly human, originally classed as genus Pithecanthropus but now classed as genus Homo.
Noun
pithecanthropoid (plural pithecanthropoids)
- One of the first species of hominid that is considered truly human, originally classed as genus Pithecanthropus but now classed as genus Homo.
- And about 40,000 generations separate the australopithecines from their successors, the pithecanthropoids, whom we think of as the first animals that indisputably must be classed as men.1969, Robert Silverberg, The Challenge of Climate: Man and His Environment, page 87
- They may in fact have been disposed of more directly: pithecanthropoids certainly ate each other and are likely to have killed and eaten their weaker kin.1970, Colin McEvedy, Sarah McEvedy, The Atlas of World History: From the beginning to Alexander the Great, page 6
Adjective
pithecanthropoid (not comparable)
- Pertaining to or characteristic of the pithecanthropoids.
- God! those carrion black pits of sawed, picked bones and opened skulls! Those nightmare chasms choked with the pithecanthropoid, Celtic, Roman, and English bones of countless unhallowed centuries!1924, H. P. Lovecraft, “The Rats in the Walls”, in Weird Tales
- 3°. by the strong development of the mid-frontal fissure, which is predominant in the relief of Neanderthal casts, and more primitive (more pithecanthropoid) in its character than in recent men, where it is mostly divided up into pieces, probably in consequence of the greater development of the...1929, Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen. Afdeling Natuurkunde, Proceedings of the Section of Sciences - Volume 32, Part 1, page 204
Examples of pithecanthropoid in a sentence
- The brow is without the frontal overhang found in adult pithecanthropoids, but though there is no supra-orbital ridge, there is marked post-orbital constriction.1974, Leonard Cottrell, The Concise encyclopedia of archaeology, page 264:
- Culture was the work of some more or less pithecanthropoid type of hominid (e.g.1960, Alan Houghton Brodrick, Man and his ancestry, page 96:
- Coon finds pithecanthropoid characteristics in a number of other North African finds, including Litorina cave, Smugglers' Cave, and Rabat in Morocco and Tangiers.1965, Ralph Leon Beals, Harry Hoijer, An Introduction to Anthropology, page 107:
- Two other skulls of the same pithecanthropoid type of Hominid have been revealed in the same geological deposits in Java by von Koeningswald in 1937 and 1938.1969, E. O. James, Creation and Cosmology: A Historical and Comparative Inquiry:
Forms of pithecanthropoid
| plural | pithecanthropoids |
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Origin of pithecanthropoid
Pithecanthropus + -oid
Questions about pithecanthropoid
- What does pithecanthropoid mean?
- Pithecanthropoid means one of the first species of hominid that is considered truly human, originally classed as genus Pithecanthropus but now classed as genus Homo.
- How do you use pithecanthropoid in a sentence?
- The brow is without the frontal overhang found in adult pithecanthropoids, but though there is no supra-orbital ridge, there is marked post-orbital constriction.
- What part of speech is pithecanthropoid?
- Pithecanthropoid can be a noun or an adjective.
- What is the plural of pithecanthropoid?
- The plural of pithecanthropoid is pithecanthropoids.
Words near pithecanthropoid in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: pithecanthropoid (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: “pithecanthropoid.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pithecanthropoid. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.