Pl. -i. Also 5–7 anglicized cynocephale. [L., a. Gr. κυνοκέφαλος dog-headed, the dog-faced baboon, f. κυνο- dog- + κεφαλή head. In mod.F. cynocéphale.]
1. One of a fabled race of men with dogs’ heads.
c. 1400. Maundev. (Roxb.), xxi. 97. Men and wymmen of þat ile hase heuedes lyke hundes; and þai er called Cynocephales.
1650. Bulwer, Anthropomet., 7. It may be the Cynocephali were but men with such heads, discovered by some Grecian.
1816. G. S. Faber, Orig. Pagan Idol., II. 479. The cynocephali or dog-headed priests of … Anubis.
2. A kind of ape having a head like that of a dog; the Dog-faced Baboon. In Zool. taken as the name of the genus.
1601. Holland, Pliny, I. 157. They … liue of the milke of certain beasts that we cal Cynocephales, hauing heads and snouts like dogs. Ibid., I. 232. Apes that be headed and long snouted like dogs, and thereof called Cynocephali.
1607. Topsell, Four-f. Beasts (1673), 6. The shape of their snout like a cynocephale.
1774. Goldsm., Nat. Hist. (1776), IV. 207. The last of the ape kind is the Cynocephalus.
1876. Birch, Monum. Hist. Egypt, 27. Their fauna, comprising the cynocephalus and the camelopard.
