1. a large hairy creature resembling a human or bear, said to live in the highest part of the Himalayas.
Word Origin1920s: apparently a mistranslation of an alleged Tibetan name by a journalist interviewing members of a 1921 expedition to Mount Everest; the journalist reported the name as Tibetan metoh kangmi ‘filthy snowman’, whereas the first element was probably a combination of mi ‘person’ and dom ‘black bear’.