Home British & World English Piltdown man

Definition of Piltdown man in English:

Piltdown man

noun

  • A fraudulent fossil composed of a human cranium and an ape jaw, allegedly discovered near Lewes in East Sussex and presented in 1912 as a genuine hominid of the early Pleistocene, but shown to be a hoax in 1953.

Origin

Piltdown, the name of a village in Sussex.

Pronunciation

Piltdown man

/ˈpɪltdaʊn/