1. The largest of the anthropoid apes (Gorilla gorilla) native to the forests of equatorial Africa, having a stocky body and coarse, dark brown or black hair.
2. Slang.
   1. A brutish man.
   2. A thug.

[New Latin, from Greek Gorillai, a tribe of hairy women, perhaps of African origin.]

WORD HISTORY   Two traditions of exploration come together in the history of the word gorilla, which also illustrates how knowledge of the classics has influenced scientific terminology. Dr. Thomas S. Savage, an American missionary to western Africa, first scientifically described the gorilla in 1847, giving it the New Latin name Troglodytes gorilla. In doing so he was using his knowledge of Greek literature, in which there exists a fourth-century B.C. translation of a report written by Hanno, another visitor to western Africa. This Carthaginian navigator, who voyaged before 480 B.C., went as far as Sierra Leone in his explorations. In the Greek translation of his report he tells of seeing Gorillai, the name of which he allegedly learned from local informants and which he thought were members of a tribe of hairy women. In fact they were probably the same creatures that Thomas Savage described about 24 centuries later.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.