apery

English

Etymology

From ape +‎ -ery.

Noun

apery (countable and uncountable, plural aperies)

1. A place where apes are kept.
   • 1862 August – 1863 March, Charles Kingsley, chapter IV, in The Water-Babies: A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby, London, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Macmillan and Co., published 1863, →OCLC, page 156:

     If you have a hippopotamus major in your brain, you are no ape, though you had four hands, no feet, and were more apish than the apes of all aperies.

2. The practice of aping; an apish action.
   • 1817, S[amuel] T[aylor] Coleridge, “[Satyrane’s Letters.] Letter III.”, in Biographia Literaria; or Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions, volume II, London: Rest Fenner, […], →OCLC, page 236:

     Every object, whether the growth of nature or the work of man, was neat and artificial. It pleased me far better, than if the houses and gardens, and pleasure fields, had been in a nobler taste: for this nobler taste would have been mere apery.

Translations

place where apes are kept

• Finnish: apinatarha

practice of aping or an apish action

• Finnish: jäljittely (fi), matkiminen (fi), apinointi (fi)
• Portuguese: macaquice f
• Swedish: apkonst (sv) c

See also

• monkey business

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “apery”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)

Anagrams

• Payer, Peary, payer, peary, praye, rapey, repay