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Gorilla – Podictionary Word of the Day

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About 2500 years ago a fellow named Hanno was put in charge of sixty ships and sailed out of the Mediterranean and down the western coast of Africa.

The account of his voyage was later translated into Greek and much later drawn upon to give a scientific name to the largest primate.

gorillaAccording to the accounts that come down to us, Hanno and his crew came upon an island upon which they found what they called “wild people,” mostly female whose bodies were covered with hair.

They had made contact with local Africans who apparently told them that the females of these hairy people were called gorillas.

Hanno reported that they chased and caught three females but when the animals fought and bit savagely they were killed and skinned. Hanno and his crew brought the skins home to Carthage along with this story.

I’m not sure if the females being caught and killed influenced the association of the word with females in Hanno’s mind.

The fact that these wild people were caught in a way that allowed them to scratch and bite their captors supports the modern thinking that these were perhaps chimpanzees and not what we would think of as gorillas.

Then in 1847 a Boston missionary (appropriately named Savage) returning from Africa brought along some bones of a giant man-like creature to which he and a colleague gave the scientific name Troglodytes gorilla; pulling the second part of the name from the accounts of Hanno.

You may have heard the word troglodyte; figuratively it means “cave-man.” That’s because back through Latin and Greek troglodyte is built on two words meaning “hole” “go into.”


Five days a week Charles Hodgson produces Podictionary – the podcast for word lovers, Thursday episodes here at OUPblog. He’s also the author of several books including his latest History of Wine Words – An Intoxicating Dictionary of Etymology from the Vineyard, Glass, and Bottle.

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