, literally meaning "monkey elbow", is a term for an elbow strike by the Japanese martial art of karate

Karate

is a martial art developed in the Ryukyu Islands in what is now Okinawa, Japan. It was developed from indigenous fighting methods called and Chinese kenpō. Karate is a striking art using punching, kicking, knee and elbow strikes, and open-handed techniques such as knife-hands. Grappling, locks,...

. There are several kinds of elbow strikes, classified by the direction they hit from. Upward elbow strikes and forward elbow strikes use the fist-chest interface as a pivot. Side elbow strikes translate the elbow, rather than rotating it around a point.

Elbow strikes offer several advantages over punches. They can be used when too close to an opponent to throw a punch, and there are less joints to give way in comparison to punches, which incorporate the comparatively weak wrist joints as well as the fingers. It is also easier to effectively harness one's whole upper body weight behind an elbow strike than a punch.

Please note that 猿臂 is also frequently transliterated

Hepburn romanization

The is named after James Curtis Hepburn, who used it to transcribe the sounds of the Japanese language into the Latin alphabet in the third edition of his Japanese–English dictionary, published in 1887. The system was originally proposed by the in 1885...

as empi.