animate

1. 1.

   belonging to the class of nouns that denote living beings

   “the word `dog' is animate”

   Antonymsinanimate

   linguistics

2. 2.

   endowed with animal life as distinguished from plant life

   “we are animate beings”

   Antonymsinanimate
3. 3.

   endowed with feeling and unstructured consciousness

   “the living knew themselves just sentient puppets on God's stage”

   Synonymssentient

   Similarsensate

Other forms of animate

past tense

animated·

present participle

animating·

third person

animates·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about animate

What does animate mean?

animate means "heighten or intensify". That is the primary sense; the word has 7 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in animate?

animate has 3 syllables: an-i-mate. The stress falls on "an". In IPA it is /ˈænəmət/.

What is another word for animate?

Close synonyms include inspire, invigorate, enliven, exalt, animize. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

What is the opposite of animate?

The recorded antonyms are inanimate, inanimate.

Is animate a common word?

animate is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.