Word.ws English Dictionary

pithecophobia

pithecophobia noun: the denial of or a discomfort with the scientific notion that humans evolved from apes.

Noun

pithecophobia (uncountable)

  1. The denial of or a discomfort with the scientific notion that humans evolved from apes.
    • Nevertheless I beg your indulgence for describing a new kind of phobia which is now widely prevalent among the American public. It may be named pithecophobia, or the dread of apes—especially the dread of apes as relatives or ancestors. During the past few years this phobia has become almost...[1927 June 24, William K. Gregory, “Two Views of the Origin of Man”, in Science, volume 65, number 1695, →DOI, page 601
    • Accordingly this little book can hardly expect much popularity either in Tennessee, where the very idea of evolution is anathema, or in the metropolitan strongholds where pithecophobia is still prevalent and man’s complete superiority to the all too man-like apes is somewhat nervously stressed.1929, William K. Gregory, “Preface”, in Our Face from Fish to Man, New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, →OCLC, pages viii–ix

Examples of pithecophobia in a sentence

  • It may be named pithecophobia, or the dread of apes—especially the dread of apes as relatives or ancestors.[1927 June 24, William K. Gregory, “Two Views of the Origin of Man”, in Science, volume 65, number 1695, →DOI, page 601:
  • As a result, he developed what can be called a sort of peculiar pithecophobia[…].2016 May, Leonardo Ambasciano, “Mind the (Unbridgeable) Gaps: A Cautionary Tale about Pseudoscientific Distortions and Scientific...
  • Anthropocentric pithecophobia has been hypothesized as an influence on late twentieth-century primate classification.2016 August, Eric L. Thomas, “Anthropocentric Rhetorical Discourse in Popular Science Writing about Human Evolution”, in Theology and...

Origin of pithecophobia

From pitheco- + phobia. Coined by American zoologist William King Gregory (1876–1970) in an 1927 article in Science (see quotation).

Questions about pithecophobia

What does pithecophobia mean?
Pithecophobia means the denial of or a discomfort with the scientific notion that humans evolved from apes.
How do you use pithecophobia in a sentence?
It may be named pithecophobia, or the dread of apes—especially the dread of apes as relatives or ancestors.
What part of speech is pithecophobia?
Pithecophobia is a noun.

Words near pithecophobia in the dictionary

  1. pithecological
  2. pithecology
  3. pithecometric
  4. pithecomorphic
  5. pithecomorphism
  6. pithecophobia
  7. pithed
  8. Pither
  9. Pithers
  10. pithes
  11. pithful

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pithecophobia (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:

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