orangutan.
An arboreal ape, characterised by its shaggy reddish-brown coat and long arms, of the genus Pongo, native to Borneo and Sumatra.
Meaning & usage
An arboreal ape, characterised by its shaggy reddish-brown coat and long arms, of the genus Pongo, native to Borneo and Sumatra.
Where this word comes from
Probably via Dutch orang-oetan, orang-oetang, apparently from Malay orang hutan, orang utan (literally “forest man”), from orang (“person, man”) + hutan (“forest”), although as a term for the animal it is attested only recently (earlier and preferred terms being mawas and mayas). As there is originally no evidence for its usage, except occasionally literally, it must be assumed to have been regional, or a descriptive collocation used to explain the animal to early travellers. Forms in -ng are alterations after the first element, orang. The name orangutan has been used in Old Javanese texts, notably in Rāmāyaṇa and Smaradahana, in the form of uraṅutan and wuraṅutan. Its usage to refer to the apes in these texts (from as early as the 9th century CE) has been seen as a refutation of claims that the name orangutan originates from a European source.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.