Word.ws English Dictionary

Tarzan English

Tarzan English noun: tarzanese.

Noun

Tarzan English (uncountable)

  1. Tarzanese
    • This book, written in Tarzan English, is so vivid and moving that the reader is compelled to live each and every page in spite of himself.1946 November 26, The Gateway, Omaha, page 2, column 3
    • After the trial was over Mr. Silvester sent to the War Office a letter which had been posted to him from Berhn, written in Tarzan English and signed Elsa Schutz.1949, Rebecca West, The Meaning of Treason, London: Macmillan and Co., page 257

Examples of Tarzan English in a sentence

  • In an effort to communicate with newcomers who understand and speak little English, we sometimes use "Tarzan English," that is, we chop our sentences short, in an effort to be understood.1962, Ruth J. Colvin, I Speak English, Santa Barbara: Bloomsbury, published 1986, page 21:
  • Sorry for my tarzan english, not a native speaker.2015 June 26, “For the love of god, add manual refresh”, in Void Tools, archived from the original on 16 Mar 2016:
  • Terms like Tarzan English have been used to describe how some immigrant children communicate with English-speaking people.2017, Mario A. Tovar, Mexican American Psychology: Social, Cultural, and Clinical Perspectives, Literacy Volunteers of America...

Synonyms of Tarzan English

Questions about Tarzan English

What does Tarzan English mean?
Tarzan English means tarzanese.
How do you use Tarzan English in a sentence?
In an effort to communicate with newcomers who understand and speak little English, we sometimes use "Tarzan English," that is, we chop our sentences short, in an effort to be understood.
What part of speech is Tarzan English?
Tarzan English is a noun.

Words near Tarzan English in the dictionary

  1. tarwood
  2. tarworks
  3. Taryba
  4. Taryn
  5. Tarzan
  6. Tarzan English
  7. Tarzan of the Apes
  8. Tarzan swing
  9. Tarzan swings
  10. Tarzan yell
  11. Tarzan yells

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Tarzan English (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: “Tarzan English.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tarzan_english. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.