anthropomorphize

American  

[an-thruh-puh-mawr-fahyz] / ˌæn θrə pəˈmɔr faɪz /

especially British, anthropomorphise

verb (used with or without object)

anthropomorphized, anthropomorphizing

1. to ascribe human form or attributes to (an animal, plant, material object, etc.).

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anthropomorphize British  

/ ˌænθrəpəˈmɔːfaɪz /

verb

1. to attribute or ascribe human form or behaviour to (a god, animal, object, etc)

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Other Word Forms

• anthropomorphization
  noun

Etymology

Origin of anthropomorphize

First recorded in 1835–45; anthropomorph(ic) ( def. ) + -ize

Explanation

When you talk about a thing or animal as if it were human, you're anthropomorphizing it. The Easter Bunny is an anthropomorphized rabbit. People anthropomorphize all the time. If you've ever seen a dog in a sweater, that's a small case of an owner anthropomorphizing his pet. A cartoon dog who talks is a bigger case of anthropomorphizing. Shel Silverstein's book The Giving Tree anthropomorphizes the tree — the tree acts as if it were a person. It may seem kind of bizarre, but treating non-human things as human is a way of imagining another point of view.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

anthropomorphize anthropomorphized anthropomorphizing

"Even the instances that did anthropomorphize AI varied widely in strength."

From Science Daily ● Apr. 19, 2026

Humans have a tendency to anthropomorphize animals and even inanimate objects, says Ayanna Howard, dean of Ohio State University’s College of Engineering and a roboticist who has researched why humans blindly trust machines.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 20, 2026

To call a river a person is not to anthropomorphize water, but rather to widen and deepen the category of ‘person’.

From Salon ● May 28, 2025

“I started thinking about how to include my coping mechanisms and make everyone a character and kind of anthropomorphize my brain.”

From Seattle Times ● Apr. 25, 2024

Charles was always one to anthropomorphize creatures, seeds, rocks even, and could be overheard talking to them as if they understood.

From "Charles and Emma: The Darwins' Leap of Faith" by Deborah Heiligman

Instead, Gallrein simply functioned as an anthropomorphized biography.

From Slate ● May 19, 2026

The houses in “Chicago Homes” are lovingly described and unapologetically anthropomorphized.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 30, 2026

There’s a Kafka-esque moment about an anthropomorphized insect in the center of the album’s plot, and the final track promises ascension, Heaven even, the many mansions of a spiritual home.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 13, 2025

Many of the films featured anthropomorphized animals, as opposed to humans, and some ultimately tackled the weight-based stigma in the end.

From Salon ● Mar. 22, 2024

And yet these Forewords and Afterwords become interesting enough when taken up in connection with a study of the historical anthropomorphized Odin.

From The Younger Edda Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda by Anderson, Rasmus Björn

“Like, ‘Let’s all think for a second about anthropomorphizing trains.’

From Los Angeles Times ● May 20, 2026

The author acknowledges the risk of anthropomorphizing but finds the totality of evidence persuasive.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 13, 2025

"This can lead to embarrassing mistakes, and for journalists to feed into the hype machine, by, for example, anthropomorphizing AI technologies, and mythologizing tech companies."

From BBC ● Mar. 13, 2024

Perhaps I'm anthropomorphizing them a bit, but when I was reading this book, Alfie didn't seem like some ticking machine with pre-programmed instructions, simply running through a cycle.

From Salon ● Oct. 1, 2023

English purists and academic computer scientists frequently look down on others for anthropomorphizing hardware and software, considering this sort of behavior to be characteristic of naive misunderstanding.

From The Jargon File, Version 4.2.2, 20 Aug 2000 by Steele, Guy L.