hominid

noun hom·i·nid \ ˈhä-mə-nəd , -ˌnid \

Updated on: 23 Feb 2018

Definition of hominid

anthropology : any of a family (Hominidae) of erect bipedal primate mammals that includes recent humans together with extinct ancestral and related forms and in some recent classifications the gorilla, chimpanzee, and orangutan

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hominid

adjective

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Recent Examples of hominid from the Web

What's certain is that some kind of hominid with sophisticated tool-making abilities lived in India at that time.

— sophie weiner, Popular Mechanics, "New Discovery of Ancient Tools Complicates Our Story of Human Evolution," 2 Feb. 2018
As Gina Kolta reports for The New York Times, a new study documents a method to extract and sequence fragments of hominid DNA from samples of cave dirt.

— jason daley, Smithsonian, "Scientists Extract DNA From Ancient Humans Out of Cave Dirt," 28 Apr. 2017
So are these elephants and hominids still separate species?

— ben panko, Smithsonian, "What Does It Mean to Be a Species? Genetics Is Changing the Answer," 19 May 2017
The highlight, naturally, is Lucy — the Australopithecine hominid that made an enormous splash when her partial skeleton was discovered in eastern Ethiopia in 1974 by Donald Johanson and Tom Gray.

— lucas peterson, New York Times, "Navigating Sometimes Chaotic, Always Fascinating Addis Ababa," 17 Oct. 2017
Leakey’s mission, as carried out by Goodall, was to chart the linkages between the great apes and early hominids, and some of the most moving sequences in the film depict Goodall’s wonderment at the evolutionary connectedness of ape and human.

— peter rainer, The Christian Science Monitor, "Documentary brings Goodall’s story to vivid life in ‘Jane’," 21 Oct. 2017
Reducing food to a powder that can be mixed and drunk undermines millennia of evolution and culture and removes one of the fundamental differences between humans and other animals, even other hominids.

— lee hutchinson, Ars Technica, "The psychology of Soylent and the prison of first-world food choices," 3 Sep. 2017
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Researchers from the Cleveland Museum of Natural History have discovered many impressive species around the world, from dinosaurs to Lucy the early hominid.

— grant segall, cleveland.com, "Dung beetles and their researchers are rare species: CMNH scientist makes discoveries (photos)," 15 July 2017
Already, their results support a more nuanced understanding of our ancient hominid cousins.

— the washington post, Twin Cities, "Neanderthal microbes reveal surprises about what they ate, and whom they kissed," 8 Mar. 2017

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'hominid.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Origin and Etymology of hominid

New Latin Hominidae, from Homin-, Homo + -idae

NEW! Time Traveler

First Known Use: circa 1889

See Words from the same year

Other Mammals Terms

dormouse, dugong, gibbon, grimalkin, sable, stoat, ungulate, vole

Medical Dictionary

hominid

noun hom·i·nid \ ˈhäm-ə-nəd, -ˌnid \

medical Definition of hominid

: any of a family (Hominidae) of erect, bipedal, primate mammals that includes recent humans together with extinct ancestral and related forms and in some recent classifications the gorilla, chimpanzee, and organgutan

—

hominid

adjective

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Britannica English: Translation of hominid for Arabic speakers Britannica.com: Encyclopedia article about hominid

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hominid

Definition of hominid

hominid

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Origin and Etymology of hominid

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hominid

medical Definition of hominid

hominid

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hominid

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hominid

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hominid

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hominid

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