Meanings
plural aperies
- countableuncountableA place where apes are kept.
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.
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 - countableuncountableapish behavior.
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.
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
Synonyms & antonyms
Synonym sets from Open English WordNet, CC BY 4.0.
Origin
Translations
Finnish apinatarha, jäljittely
- apinatarhaplace where apes are kept
- jäljittelypractice of aping or an apish action
- matkiminenpractice of aping or an apish action
- apinointipractice of aping or an apish action
Portuguese macaquice
- macaquicepractice of aping or an apish action
Swedish apkonst
- apkonstpractice of aping or an apish action
Rhymes & wordplay
Anagrams
Cite this entry
apery. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/apery
“apery.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/apery. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “apery,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/apery.
Source: apery on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.