Why do some say that humans are apes?

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Humans evolved from a species of ape. And our body language shows that we are genetically similar to them in every way. And to say humans are apes as an insult is wrong, because apes are actually intelligent, gentle, peaceful creatures.

On second thought, maybe apes evolved from humans.

They sure resemble apes at times.Just think of any high school cafeteria with a food fight going on,the shrill squeals of the females as they get pelted with tater tots and the males grunting as they hurl food around.

What about monkeys? Are humans monkeys? We're more closely related to the Old World Monkeys than the Old World Monkeys and us are related to the New World Monkeys. I guess that would make us monkeys. However, in ordinary usage "monkey" and "ape" exclude humans.

We're all descended from apes

Charles Darwin said so.

That's what I have heard. That only in English is there a distinction between "monkeys and apes".

Even in English "ape" originally meant "tailless monkey".

And when the English speakers invented the word they first applied the term to the critters that they encountered relatively close to England: the common critters in North Africa (and on the Rock of Gibralter) still called "Barbary apes" which are not even zoologically classified as "apes" today. Barbary "apes" are a type of macaque which is an old world monkey. A monkey that happens to lack a tail.

Probably only later, when they explored more of the world, and encountered other tail less primates, like gibbons, orangutans, chimps, and gorillas, did the word get applied to creatures that are still officially classed as "apes" today.

But apes (in the modern taxon) do seem to be a real group with certain common anatomical traits that monkeys lack. Monkeys (old and new world) have the same kind of joint in their shoulders that dogs, cats, and horses, have. They can only move their forelimbs in one plane (like a human climbing a ladder). They cant spread their arms out side ways. But gibbons, the great apes, and humans, all have something in common that no other mammals have: ball-and-socket type joints in both arms and hips, and all of them can spread their arms out sideways, and can move their forelimbs in both planes of motion (important for supporting a heavier body in the trees). This implies that that whole group of primates (including us) inherited ball and socket joints from a single common ancestor that had split off from the monkeys.

An ape is a primate sharing a common descent with all species in the superfamily Hominoidea.

This taxonomic group includes all species of gorilla, chimpanzee, gibbon, bonobo, orangutan, and yes, human.

I think a better question is, why do some say that humans aren't apes? After all, in a purely scientific sense, no one would disagree that humans are animals, nor disagree that we are mammals, nor that we are primates. But then why does the "A word" seem to upset so many people? I think it should be perfectly obvious that humans are not monkeys, lemurs, or tarsiers, so if we aren't apes, what are we?