gibbon

Etymology

It is borrowed from French gibbon,^{[2][3][4][5][6]} a name used by the French naturalist Buffon in his “Histoire Naturelle”.^[6][4][7] Buffon gave it as a local name, from the French colonies in India according to Barnhart, Etymonline and Klein, from a language of Southeast Asia according to the American Heritage Dictionary,^[4][3][8][6] and it was said to have been brought to Europe by the Marquis Joseph-François Dupleix (1697–1763), governor general of the French possessions in India from 1742 to 1754.^[3][8][4] No such word has been found in any language of India,^[2][3] and Skeat and the Shorter Oxford call the origin unknown,^[7][9] while Collins and the Oxford Dictionary of English still take it from an Indian dialect word.^[10][11] Weekley reports Skeat's suggestion that the "Indian word" is the English surname Gibbon, a diminutive of the name Gilbert, and notes that the tombs of the Gybbon family at Rolvenden in Kent, from about 1700, bear an ape's head as the family crest.^[12]

Earliest recorded meaning

A long-armed ape of the East Indies: 1770 in the 1989 edition of the OED, Barnhart and Etymonline.^[13][4][3] The current OED's first quotation is from O. Goldsmith's History of the Earth (1774), the date Merriam-Webster Unabridged also gives.^[2][5]

Semantic evolution

The OED describes the name as common to the long-armed apes of the genus Hylobates, but applied especially to Hylobates lar of the islands of the Indian Archipelago.^[2] Merriam-Webster Unabridged extends it to the genus Symphalangus and calls these apes the smallest and most fully tree-dwelling of the anthropoid apes.^[5]

Timeline

• 1770 – a long-armed ape of the East Indies.^[13][4][3] The current OED's first quotation is from 1774.^[2][5]

Meanings

Noun

1. Any of several small, agile, tailless apes of the forests of southeastern Asia and the East Indies, with very long arms, that live in trees and swing from branch to branch.^{[14][5][15][10]}

Usage notes

The 1989 edition of the OED records an unrelated gibbon, a sand eel, from 1868,^[13] and Wright's dialect dictionary an obsolete northern and Yorkshire gibbon, a nut-hook or stick with a curved handle.^[16]

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d e f Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
5. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
6. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
7. ^ a b Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
9. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
11. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
12. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
13. ^ a b c Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
14. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1992), 3rd ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin
15. ^ Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (2003), 11th ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
16. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)