All 10 Uses of

animate
in
Interview with the Vampire

But outside, even as the night seemed to dissolve in a fierce driving wind, I could feel something calling to me, something inanimate which I'd never known.†
Part 3 *

But outside, even as the night seemed to dissolve in a fierce driving wind, I could feel something calling to me, something inanimate which I'd never known.†
Part 3

I was bent on it now, possessed only of some vague notion that in works of art I could find some solace while bringing nothing of death to what was inanimate and yet magnificently possessed of the spirit of life itself.†
Part 3

Nothing animated his sunken body but a fierce will: hence, his eyes for their gleam were all the more sunken in his skull, and his lips in their trembling made his old yellowed mouth more horrible.†
Part 1 *

His face was as smooth as mine is now, more animated for the blood, but cold and without emotion.†
Part 1

Books of poets, the program from a play, and all around the soft humming of the vast hotel, distant violins, a woman talking in a rapid, animated voice above the zinging of a hairbrush, and a man high above on the top floor repeating over and over to the night air, 'I understand, I am just beginning, I am just beginning to understand....'Is it as you would have it?'†
Part 3

I watched him all the harder, convinced it was some powerful illusion I could penetrate with keen attention; and the more I watched, the more he seemed to smile and finally to be animated with a soundless whispering, musing, singing.†
Part 3

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 thinks

This 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".
(4) (meaning too rare to warrant focus)
meaning too rare to warrant focus:

Much more rarely, Linguists use the form animacy to describe whether (or the degree to which) a noun feels and thinks. It impacts grammar. For example, in English, "She moved" v. "It moved."