animation
Pluralanimations
- 1A technique that displays still drawings or objects in rapid succession to create the illusion of movement, or the film or game produced this way.
The film's hand-drawn animation took a team of artists three years to complete.
Modern animation increasingly relies on computer-generated imagery rather than physical cels.
Note
A filmmaker's word that works two ways. It is uncountable for the craft (she studied animation) and countable for a single finished piece (a short animation). The frames may be drawings, inanimate objects moved between shots, or computer graphics. In everyday speech the countable use often means simply a cartoon, and the uncountable use covers the whole medium.
- 2The state of being lively, brisk, and full of spirit and energy.
He described his travels with such animation that the whole room fell silent to listen.
Her usual animation faded as the long meeting wore on.
Similarliveliness, energy, enthusiasm, vivacity, spirit
Oppositelethargy, listlessness, dullness
- 3The act of animating something, or giving it life or spirit.
Ancient legends tell of the animation of statues that then walked among the living.
The ritual was believed to bring about the animation of the carved idol.
Note
The action noun at the root of the word comes from Latin animatio, from animare, and is built like English animate plus -ion. Joseph Hall in 1647 writes of "the animation of the same soul quickening that whole frame": life given by a soul to a body. The word names the giving of life, a process. The state of being alive is what that process leaves behind.
- 4The condition of being alive or animate, as distinct from inert or lifeless matter.
Biologists once searched for a special force that accounted for the animation of living things.
He wondered at what moment a developing embryo first acquires animation.
Oppositelifelessness, death
- 5The organized program of games, sports, shows, and other entertainment offered to guests at a vacation resort.
The resort's animation organized water polo, quizzes, and a nightly cabaret.
Families chose the package partly for its lively animation program.
Similarentertainment
- 6The grammatical shift by which a noun in the inanimate category comes to be treated as animate.
The grammar undergoes animation when speakers begin marking a formerly inanimate noun for animate agreement.
Animation of certain loanwords explains why they now take animate verb forms.
Note
A grammarian's term, usually paired with its reverse, disanimation. Samuel E. Martin's A Reference Grammar of Korean (1992) observes that "animation and disanimation can temporarily suspend the system": treating a noun as animate for a moment can break constraints that otherwise hold firm. Depending on the language, the shift can show up in agreement, case marking or plural forms.
Practice
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Origin
From Latin animatio, from the verb animare (to give life), formed in English as animate plus the suffix -ion.