pithecomorphism
English
Etymology
From pitheco- + -morphism.
Noun
pithecomorphism (uncountable)
- (rare) The state or quality of having the form of an ape; resemblance to apes.
- 1877, Henry MacCormac, “God's Kingdom is a Kingdom of Reason”, in The Conversation of a Soul with God: a Theodicy, London: Trübner & Co., page 108:
- Some are dissatisfied, call it anthropomorphism, when we venture to compare man with God. After all, men are not apes or ape-like, pithecomorphism is but an insensate dream. Without or doubt or question, man, I affirm, assert, and declare, is not an ape or ape-like.
- 2002, Bénédicte de Villers, “Paleoanthropology from a Phenomenological Point of View. Some Remarks about the Genetic Structures of Human Life”, in Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, editor, Life Energies, Forces and the Shaping of Life: Vital, Existential: Vital, Existential (Analecta Husserliana: The Yearbook of Phenomenological Research; 74), Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, DOI:, →ISBN, page 74:
- Indeed, Leroi-Gourhan's objective, as I have said, was not to find hypothetical transitions between pithecomorphism and anthropomorphism but to spot an evolutive divergence towards a totally original way of being, that of man.
- 2017, Chris Herzfeld, “Skeletons, Skins, and Skulls: Apes in the Age of Colonial Expansion and Natural History Collections”, in Kevin Frey, transl., The Great Apes: A Short History, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, →ISBN, page 50:
- […] Cuvier and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire had already “refuted,” in 1817 and again in 1824, a black origin for the Egyptian civilization, […] . They evoked the “pithecomorphism,” or resemblance to apes, of the “black race,” and said moreover that the skulls of Egyptian mummies were similar to those of Europeans.
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Related terms
- pithecomorphic
Further reading
- “pithecomorphism”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary