before vowels pithec-, word-forming element meaning "pertaining to an ape or monkey," from Greek pithēkos "ape," which Beekes calls "A loanword from an unknown language."
Entries linking to pitheco-
pithecanthropus n.
genus of extinct primates, 1895, from Modern Latin, literally "monkey-man," from Greek pithēkos "ape" (see pitheco-) + anthrōpos "man" (see anthropo-). Coined 1868 by Haeckel as a name for a hypothetical link between apes and men (attested in English in this sense from 1876); applied by Dr. Eugène Dubois, physician of the Dutch army in Java, to remains he found there in 1891. Classical plural would have been pithecanthropi. Related: Pithecanthrope; pithecanthropoid.