a. [As prec. + -IC.]
1. Representing or imitating animal forms, as in decorative art or symbolism.
1872. Archaeol. Cant., VIII. 266. A legend not in runes, but in zoomorphic characters.
1885. M’Crie, Sk. & Stud., 23. The zoomorphic character so conspicuous in the ornamentation of Celtic manuscripts.
2. Attributing the form or nature of an animal to something, esp. to a deity or superhuman being. (Cf. ANTHROPOMORPHIC.)
1880. Murray, Philol. Soc. Addr., 22. The enlargement or abbreviation of words by letters, which in the curious zoomorphic dialect of many books, creep in, or drop out, or fall away, or develop as parasites.
1884. A. Lang, Custom & Myth, 118. Mr. Sayce, who recognises totemism as the origin of the zoomorphic element in Egyptian religion.
b. Having, or conceived or represented as having, the form of an animal.
1886. A. Lang, in 19th Cent., 428. Under Dynasty XII. the gods that had previously been represented in art as beasts appear in their later shapes, often half anthropomorphic, half zoomorphic, dog-headed, cat-headed, [etc.]. Ibid. (1887), Myth, Rit. & Relig., I. 9. All pre-Christian religions have their ‘zoomorphic’ or partially zoomorphic idols, god in the shape of the lower animals, or with the heads and necks of the lower animals.
