Word.ws English Dictionary

Tarzanese

Tarzanese noun: broken English, such as that spoken by the fictional character Tarzan (as played by film actor Johnny Weissmuller from 1932 to 1948).

Noun

Tarzanese (uncountable)

  1. Broken English, such as that spoken by the fictional character Tarzan (as played by film actor Johnny Weissmuller from 1932 to 1948).
    • On the contrary, one of his favorite everyday expressions is “Umgawa,” which he defines as Tarzanese for “Let’s get the hell out of here.”1970 August 17, Sports Illustrated, Chicago, page 60, column 1
    • Often, fresh from the act he dined at the restaurant, still uptight, forgetting where he was, he ordered in the Tarzanese of the Arena. The waiters thought him a gibbering baboon.2001, Frank Palescandolo, Remembrance of a Restaurant: A Decameron of Dining, iUniverse, page 199

Synonyms of Tarzanese

Origin of Tarzanese

From Tarzan + -ese.

Questions about Tarzanese

What does Tarzanese mean?
Tarzanese means broken English, such as that spoken by the fictional character Tarzan (as played by film actor Johnny Weissmuller from 1932 to 1948).
What part of speech is Tarzanese?
Tarzanese is a noun.

Words near Tarzanese in the dictionary

  1. Tarzan yodels
  2. Tarzan-like
  3. Tarzan-speak
  4. Tarzana
  5. Tarzaned
  6. Tarzanese
  7. Tarzanesque
  8. Tarzanian
  9. Tarzaniana
  10. Tarzanians
  11. Tarzanic

Source and license

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