Gorilla
/ɡəˈrɪlə/noun
The largest living primate, a ground-dwelling ape of central African forest.
The Greek roots
Literally: “the hairy ones of Hanno's report”
The story of the word
The word is not Greek in origin, but Greek is the only reason it survives. Hanno the Carthaginian sailed down the West African coast around 500 BC, and the surviving Greek version of his log describes an island full of hairy creatures whose local name the interpreters gave as γόριλλαι. Thomas Savage and Jeffries Wyman lifted that name from the text when they described the ape in 1847. Whether Hanno's creatures were apes, baboons or people, nobody can now say.
- How it travelled
- West African source → Ancient Greek text → scientific Latin → English
- First recorded
- 1847
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
In a sentence
The gorilla group has been tracked by the same family for three generations.
A silverback gorilla will chest-beat rather than fight if he can help it.