From ape + -ess.
apess (plural apesses) (rare)
- A female ape.
1865, Richard Francis Burton, “Dirge.”, in Stone Talk (Λιθοφωνημα / Lithophonema): Being Some of the Marvellous Sayings of a Petral Portion of Fleet Street, London, to One Doctor Polyglott, Ph.D., London: Hardwicke, Robert, pages 20–21:Yet, though his limbs with pile were rough, / And though his tail was long enough / […] / Th’ apesses [he] treated with disdain[.]
1870 November 18, William Darwin Fox, letter to Charles Darwin:I must run over & see you some day. Why not you & Mrs Darwin run over here, when you have finished your Book—you can study my little Apes & Apesses—Kindest regards to Mrs Darwin & thanks for her note—Always yours Affecly / W D Fox
1884, The Spectator, volume 57, Poetry. In the Beginning., page 1173:Suddenly then he rose, and thinking scorn of his fellows / Longed to be quit of them all, his Apess specially.
1923, Paul Rosenfeld, Musical Chronicle (1917–1923), page 81:The second movement, the allegro ironico, is a variation on the well-known theme “Je m’en fous.” An ape-like mockery whinnies through it. Cocoanuts are shied at all the four corners of the world. Some of them display a mysterious tendency to fall near the spot where the apess sits weeping over the children.
1939, James Bridie, One Way of Living, page 196:In negroes and in anthropoid apes, the index finger is much shorter than the ring finger. In negresses and in anthropoid apesses, the index finger is often longer.
1986, Rikki Ducornet, Entering Fire, Chatto & Windus, →ISBN, page 142:The apess doesn’t look her age.
1998 April 20, Geoff Miller, “Re: The Tuneless Whistler -- a trial of patience!”, in alt.peeves (Usenet), message-ID <geoffmEroyF8.79L@netcom.com>:I dunno; do apesses screech more than male orangutans 'n' gorillae?
2000, “The Life Cycle” (Part I), in Michèle Plott, Lauri Umansky, editors, Making Sense of Women’s Lives: An Introduction to Women’s Studies, Collegiate Press, →ISBN, Women Working: Germaine Greer, “Work”, page 201:[A]pesses do all the child-rearing.
2009, Stephen Perkinson, “Chapter Three: The Vocabulary of Likeness at the Late Fourteenth-Century French Court”, in The Likeness of the King: A Prehistory of Portraiture in Late Medieval France, University of Chicago Press, →ISBN, Conclusion: “Counterfeiting” Nature, ca. 1400, page 186:She then remarks that some people refer to art as the “apess or ape of nature, because just as the apess greatly imitates the manners of humans, art greatly imitates the works of nature.”
