ape

Etymology 1

From Middle English ape, from Old English apa (“ape, monkey”), from Proto-West Germanic *apō, from Proto-Germanic *apô (“monkey, ape”), possibly derived from Proto-Indo-European *h₂ep- (“water”), compare Proto-Celtic *abū (“river”), if the word originally referred to a "water sprite". Traditionally assumed to be an ancient loanword instead, ultimately probably from an unidentified non-Indo-European language of regions in Africa or Asia where monkeys are native. Cognate with Scots aip (“ape”), West Frisian aap (“ape”), Dutch aap (“monkey, ape”), Low German Ape (“ape”), German Affe (“monkey, ape”), Swedish apa (“monkey, ape”), Icelandic api (“ape”).

noun

1. A primate of the clade Hominoidea, generally larger than monkeys and distinguished from them by having no tail.
2. Any such primate other than a human.
3. (derogatory) An uncivilized person.
4. One who apes; a foolish imitator.

verb

1. (intransitive) To behave like an ape.
2. (transitive) To imitate or mimic, particularly to imitate poorly.
   But there’s this difference; one is gold put to the use of paving-stones, and the other is tin polished to ape a service of silver. 1847, Emily Brontë, chapter XXI, in Wuthering Heights
   It is not conceived as a mere “aping” in externals nor as an enacting in the sense of assuming a foreign role. 1961, J. A. Philip, “Mimesis in the Sophistês of Plato,”, in Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, volume 92, page 454
   Every year a paper or a book appears, bemoaning the fate of economics and complaining about its attempts to ape physics. 2010, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, New York: Random House, page 180

Etymology 2

Clipping of apeshit (“ape-shit (crazy)”).

adj

1. (slang) Wild; crazy.
   We were ape over the new look.
   He went ape when he heard the bad news.