# animate

Pronunciation: US say "AN-uh-mayt" /ˈæn.ə.meɪt/; UK say "AN-i-mayt" /ˈæn.ɪ.meɪt/

## Verb

1. To set something in motion, or to give it the appearance of moving.
   - Simple: To make something move, or to make it look as if it is moving.
   - _Engineers animate the bridge model so they can watch how it sways in a strong wind._
   - _It took the studio three years to animate the dragon, one drawing at a time._
2. To fill someone or something with spirit and vigor; to stir up or enliven.
   - Simple: To give someone more energy or spirit, or to make something more lively.
   - _A surprise speech from the coach animated the tired team before the final quarter._
   - _Nothing seems to animate him like a good argument about baseball._

## Adjective

Pronunciation: US say "AN-uh-muht" /ˈæn.ə.mət/; UK say "AN-i-muht" /ˈæn.ɪ.mət/

3. Having life; alive rather than lifeless.
   - Simple: Living, or having life.
   - _The exhibit asks children to sort the objects on the table into animate and inanimate groups._
   - _Early philosophers puzzled over what separates animate creatures from the stones and streams around them._
4. Full of energy and liveliness.
   - Simple: Full of energy and life.
   - _Even at ninety, my grandmother was an animate storyteller who waved her hands as she talked._
   - _The lecture was animate and funny, and nobody checked a phone for an hour._
5. Capable of motion; having the power to move.
   - Simple: Able to move.
   - _Some sea creatures are animate only as larvae, swimming freely before they fix themselves to a rock for life._
   - _After the restoration, the museum's clockwork figures are animate again, nodding and turning at the stroke of each hour._
6. Of a noun or pronoun: referring to something considered alive, generally people, animals and deities, and sometimes plants or spirits.
   - Simple: Describes a noun or pronoun for something seen as alive, such as a person or animal.
   - _The grammar explains that nouns for spirits are treated as animate, even though spirits have no bodies._
   - _In the older dialect the word for sun was animate, but in the modern language it is inanimate._
7. Having the inflected form a word takes when it agrees with an animate noun or pronoun.
   - Simple: Changed in form to match a noun for something seen as alive.
   - _The adjective appears with its animate ending because it describes the word for grandmother._
   - _In the second sentence the verb is animate, agreeing with the noun for hunter rather than the noun for spear._

## Origin

From Middle English animat(e), from Latin animātus, the past participle of animō (“to fill with breath, quicken, encourage”), from anima (“soul, spirit, breath”). The verb comes from the adjective.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/animate (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).