Animatism

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The belief that everything is pervaded by a life force giving each inanimate object a consciousness or personality, but not a soul as in animism. countable, uncountable
  2. 2
    the attribution of consciousness and personality to natural phenomena such as thunderstorms and earthquakes and to objects such as plants and stones wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
allotheismanimismatomismformheathenismidealism

Etymology

From animate + -ism. Originally coined by British anthropologist Robert Marett to refer to "a belief in a generalized, impersonal power over which people have some measure of control".

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.