Tarzan

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The fictional jungle hero created by Edgar Rice Burroughs, a man raised by apes in the African wilderness
2. A legendary character from early twentieth-century adventure stories who was raised by apes and swings through the jungle
3. The muscular jungle protagonist of Edgar Rice Burroughs novels and films, who was reared in the wild by great apes

Etymology: Edgar Rice Burroughs invented "Tarzan" in 1912 for his fiction, and the name was not drawn from any real language. In the story, it is the name of an infant raised by apes in the African jungle, and within the books' invented ape tongue it means "white-skin." That detail is the heart of the name: a word coined to describe a foundling who is, in the eyes of his adoptive community, distinguished by his pale skin. Scholars have suggested the name may be echoic, built from the sounds of various "exotic" names that Western writers of the period used for far-off places and peoples, a habit linked to what is known as Orientalism. Such a theory is hard to prove, since Burroughs left no clear record of how he arrived at the sounds he chose.