Re: men, elves, wolves, and robots; was: man, etc.

Sally Caves wrote:

> He suggested that we could call these creatures (that fascinate me
> almost as
> much as the werewolf does) ANTHROPOIDS (like a human) but I told him this
> term has been coopted by English primarily for referring to the great apes.
> Is that true?
I've seen it usually in the phrase "anthropoid apes", but a Google
search reveals that "anthropoid ape" is used in reference to all apes
including gibbons, not just the great apes. I imagine it's a holdover
from the old days when "ape" could be used in reference to monkeys
(these days we still have the names "Barbary ape" and "Celebes black
ape", which are tailless macaques, but in general "ape" is reserved for
gibbons and great apes). Otherwise it doesn't make sense to have a
phrase "anthropoid ape" that means essentially the same thing as just
plain "ape".

On the other hand, my languages typically don't have distinct words for
"monkey" and "ape", so a phrase meaning "human-like ape/monkey" (in
Minza, "sym urwavi") would be useful.

It also occurs to me that I don't yet have a word for "robot", which
would be useful to have, but I'm not sure that I actually want to borrow
the word "robot" directly.