Word.ws English Dictionary

animacy

animacy noun: the state of being animate (alive or supernaturally seeming alive).

Noun

animacy (usually uncountable, plural animacies)

  1. (usually) The state of being animate (alive or supernaturally seeming alive).
    • These may differ radically in their linguistic animacy, as briefly discussed above, without this having any consequences for their biological animacy.2011, Seppo Kittilä, Katja Västi, Jussi Ylikoski, Case, Animacy and Semantic Roles, page 6
    Antonyms:
    inanimacy
  2. (usually) In some languages, the characteristic of a noun, dependent on its living or sentient nature, which affects grammatical features (it can modify verbs used with the noun, affect the noun's declension, etc.).

Synonyms of animacy

Antonyms

Forms of animacy

pluralanimacies

Origin of animacy

From animate + -cy.

Questions about animacy

What does animacy mean?
Animacy means the state of being animate (alive or supernaturally seeming alive).
What part of speech is animacy?
Animacy is a noun.
What is the plural of animacy?
The plural of animacy is animacies.

Words near animacy in the dictionary

  1. anils
  2. anima
  3. anima mundi
  4. animable
  5. animacies
  6. animacy
  7. animadversion
  8. animadversional
  9. animadversions
  10. animadversive
  11. animadversiveness

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: animacy (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “animacy.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/animacy. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.