orangutan
pronunciation
How to pronounce orangutan in British English:
UK [ˈɔːrəŋˈuːtæn]
How to pronounce orangutan in American English:
US [ɔˈræŋətæn]
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- Noun:
- large long-armed ape of Borneo and Sumatra having arboreal habits
Word Origin
- orangutan (n.)
- 1690s, from Dutch orang-outang (1631), from Malay orang utan, literally "man of the woods," from orang "man" + utan, hutan "forest, wild." It is possible that the word originally was used by town-dwellers on Java to describe savage forest tribes of the Sunda Islands and that Europeans misunderstood it to mean the ape. The name is not now applied in Malay to the animal, but there is evidence that it was used so in 17c. [OED]
Example
- 1. An orangutan infant at ragunan zoo in jakarta , indonesia , on february 15 , 2007 .
- 2. By the 1950s , tests revealed that the skull was only 600 years old and the jaw came from an orangutan .
- 3. An orangutan named peipei got a real treat when a rabbit hopped into his enclosure at the yunnan wild animal park in china .
- 4. The firm has been accused of clear-felling rainforest that is home to endangered orangutan and of cutting down conservation forest for plantations .
- 5. Leuser , a blind sumatran orangutan has survived poachers , air rifles , and deforestation during his 13 years of life .