animality
Americannoun
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the state of being an animal.
-
the animal nature or instincts of human beings.
noun
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the animal side of man, as opposed to the intellectual or spiritual
-
the fact of being or having the characteristics of an animal
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of animality
1605–15; animal + -ity, modeled on carnality ( def. )
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
“Wolf Play” suggests there’s an animality connecting us that transcends gendered social scripts; kinship and love are wild and don’t play by any rules.
From New York Times ● Feb. 16, 2022
He believed “a being who is ashamed of his animality in that very fact proves himself to be more than a mere animal”.
From The Guardian ● Oct. 10, 2019
He thinks that personhood is a form of self-imposed dullness and yearns for the vivid openness of animality.
From The New Yorker ● May 23, 2016
Just as personality captures so many interesting components of what makes humans human, animality does likewise for other species.
From Slate ● Apr. 9, 2013
Some authorities have thought their animality proved by the high degree of contractility which their tissues evince.
From Marvels of Pond-life A Year's Microscopic Recreations by Slack, Henry J.
Dugatkin writes about how studying animalities can help us understand the costs and benefits associated with certain animal temperaments.
From Slate ● Apr. 13, 2013
Studying animalities is a powerful way to increase our understanding of how natural selection has shaped the bewildering and beautiful diversity of life we see around us.
From Slate ● Apr. 9, 2013
Researchers have selectively bred even more dramatically proactive and even more dramatically reactive mice, establishing a genetic underpinning to animalities.
From Slate ● Apr. 9, 2013
Animal behaviorist Jaap Koolhaas has found two coping styles in these animals—which amount to two different animalities, labeled proactive and reactive.
From Slate ● Apr. 9, 2013
Here is one who spends his working hours creating something that seems strange and disquieting and ugly, and devotes his leisure to simple animalities; surely one so utterly unlike ourselves cannot be an artist?
From Art by Bell, Clive
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
