monkey
monkey
/ˈmʌŋki/
1 an animal with a long tail, that climbs trees and lives in hot countries. There are several types of monkey and they are related to apes and humans.
Like humans, apes and monkeys live in complex social groupings.
The disease affects monkeys and humans in similar ways.
A troop of monkeys crashed their way through the trees.
Scientists visiting the island encountered a troop of wild monkeys.
In non-scientific language, people sometimes use the word monkey for animals like chimpanzees, which have no tails and are in fact apes.
see also rhesus monkey, spider monkey
Topics Animalsa2
Collocations
adjective
… of monkeys
monkey + verb
2 (informal) a child who is active and likes playing tricks on people
Come here, you cheeky little monkey!
3 (British English, slang) £500
see also grease monkey
Idioms
(British English, slang) if you say that it is brass monkeys or brass monkey weather, you mean that it is very cold weather
(informal) to free yourself of something that causes you worry or difficulty
The team have never beaten Germany and they'll be desperate to get that monkey off their backs.
(British English, slang) used to say, in a way that is not very polite, that you do not care about something, or are not at all interested in it
I don’t give a monkey’s whether you want to come or not.
(informal) to make somebody seem stupid
Word Origin
mid 16th cent.: of unknown origin, perhaps from Low German.