Both Uses of
animate
in
The Scarlet Letter
- A gift, a faculty, if it had not been departed, was suspended and inanimate within me.†
p. 23.7inanimate = not living; or (more rarely) not feeling or thinking (a plant--not an animal)standard prefix: The prefix "in-" in inanimate means not and reverses the meaning of animate. This is the same pattern you see in words like invisible, incomplete, and insecure.
- "Where," asked he, with a look askance at them—for it was the clergyman's peculiarity that he seldom, now-a-days, looked straight forth at any object, whether human or inanimate, "where, my kind doctor, did you gather those herbs, with such a dark, flabby leaf?"
p. 88.4 *inanimate = not feeling or thinking like a human or an animalstandard prefix: The prefix "in-" in inanimate means not and reverses the meaning of animate. This is the same pattern you see in words like invisible, incomplete, and insecure.
Definitions:
-
(1)
(animate as in: animated by her strong belief) inspire, make more lively, or bring to life
-
(2)
(animate as in: an animated cartoon) make a moving cartoon (a film technique that uses a set of gradually changing pictures to simulate movement when played in series)
-
(3)
(animate as in: animate v. inanimate) alive; or (more rarely) an animal--not a plant; or (more rarely still) the degree to which as an animal feels and thinksThis sense of animate is typically contrasted with inanimate. The adjective animate describes something as being alive--such as a dog. The adjective inanimate describes something as not being alive--such as a rock.
Note that this sense of animate is pronounced differently than other senses. Most senses whether used as a noun or an adjective) rhyme with mate, but this sense rhymes more closely with mutt".