sapien

sapien noun: a human, a specimen of Homo sapiens.

Noun

sapien (plural sapiens)

(proscribed, rare) A human, a specimen of Homo sapiens.
- [The superhero Mr. Incredible fights against a gorilla named Ungorilla.]
  Ungorilla: You foolish sapien! I am the Ungorilla! I possess the speed and strength of a very strong gorilla! How can you possibly defeat me?2009, The Incredibles (comic) #1, page 9
- Better still, with its larger brain Piltdown neatly fit the preconception of what earlier human forms should look like than did either the "primitive" Neanderthals or the small-minded Pithecanthropus skulls. Moreover, it meant that the sapien lineage (in England) could be traced independently of...2015, David J. Meltzer, The Great Paleolithic War: How Science Forged an Understanding of America's Ice Age Past, University of Chicago Press, →ISBN, page 279

Proper noun capitalized: Sapien

Sapien (plural Sapiens)

A surname.

Forms of sapien

Noun
plural	sapiens
Proper noun
plural	Sapiens

Origin of sapien

The word is a singular form, derived by back-formation and shortening of translingual Homo sapiens by interpreting the latter as an English plural form. However, in Latin the word sapiens is strictly singular, its plural form being sapientes (and the Latin plural of homo sapiens is homines sapientes).

Phrases with sapien

homo sapien

Questions about sapien

What does sapien mean?: Sapien means a human, a specimen of Homo sapiens.
What part of speech is sapien?: Sapien can be a noun or a proper noun.
What is the plural of sapien?: The plural of sapien is sapiens.

Words near sapien in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: sapien (page history and authors); Sapien (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: 2026-09-02

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