sb. and a. [a. L. animal a living creature, prop. ‘anything living,’ for animāle, neut. of adj. animāl-is having the breath of life, f. anima air, breath, life: see -AL. As sb. hardly in Eng. bef. end of 16th c.; not in Bible 1611. Cf. Fr. animal, animau, 16th c. in Littré.]
A. sb.
1. A living being; a member of the higher of the two series of organized beings, of which the typical forms are endowed with life, sensation, and voluntary motion, but of which the lowest forms are hardly distinguishable from the lowest vegetable forms by any more certain marks than their evident relationship to other animal forms, and thus to the animal series as a whole rather than to the vegetable series.
[1398. Trevisa, Barth. De P. R., XVIII. i. (1495), 735. All that is comprehendyd of flesshe and of spyryte of lyfe … is callyd Animall, a beest.
1513. Douglas, Æneis, Comm. (1839), 1. As for animal and homo … undyr animal beyn contenyt all mankynd, beist, byrd, fowll, fisch, serpent, and all other sik thingis.
1594. T. B., La Primaudaye’s Fr. Acad., II. 581. Many men, by reason of their ignorance in the Latine tongue, think that Animal is a beast, whereas it signifieth a liuing creature.]
1602. Shaks., Haml., II. ii. 20. What a piece of work is a man!… the Parragon of Animals.
1667. Milton, P. L., IV. 621. Man hath his daily work … While other Animals unactive range.
1678. Cudworth, Intell. Syst., 75. The Deity is generally supposed to be a Perfectly Happy Animal, Incorruptible and Immortal.
1736. Butler, Anal., I. iii. 82. Man is the acknowledged governing animal upon the earth.
1860. Owen, Palæont., 4. When an organism receives nutritive matter by a mouth, inhales oxygen and exhales carbonic acid, and developes tissues, the proximate principles of which are quaternary compounds of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, it is called an animal.
1869. Huxley, in Fortn. Rev., Feb., 138. An animal cannot make protoplasm, but must take it ready-made from some other animal, or some plant.
2. In common usage: One of the lower animals; a brute, or beast, as distinguished from man. (Often restricted by the uneducated to quadrupeds; and familiarly applied especially to such as are used by man, as a horse, ass or dog.)
1600. Shaks., A. Y. L., I. i. 16. For the which his Animals on his dunghils are as much bound to him as I.
1697. Dryden, Virg. Georg., IV. 224. Of all the Race of Animals, alone The Bees have common Cities of their own.
1734. Pope, Ess. Man, III. 65. He … feasts the animal he dooms his feast.
1875. Helps, Anim. & Masters, iii. 53. When I use the word ‘animals’ I mean all living creatures except men and women.
1879. Furnivall, in Rep. New Shaks. Soc., 9. The Animal Similes in Henry VI.
Mod. Kindness to animals; domestic animals; the animals at the ‘Zoo’; we fastened our animals to trees round the camp-fire.
3. Contemptuously or humorously for: A human being who is no better than a brute, or whose animal nature has the ascendancy over his reason; a mere animal. (Cf. similar use of creature.)
1588. Shaks., L. L. L., IV. ii. 27. His intellect is not replenished, hee is onely an animal, onely sensible in the duller parts.
a. 1704. T. Brown, Table T., Wks. 1730, I. 140. A physician is a grave formal animal.
1765. S. Mackenzie, in Ellis, Orig. Lett., II. 509, IV. 481. There is no animal on the face of the earth that the Duke has a more thorough contempt for than Grenville.
1795. Mary Wollstonecr., Lett., xxxiii. (1879), 93. My animal is well; I have not yet taught her to eat, but nature is doing the business. I gave her a crust to assist the cutting of her teeth.
1851. Ruskin, Stones of Ven. (1874), I. App. 363. Above the reach of human animals.
4. As in the slang phr. ‘go the whole hog.’
1838. Dickens, Nich. Nick., iii. Opposing all half-measures and preferring to go the extreme animal.
1864. Sala, Twice round Clock, 62. Better pay first-class and go the entire animal.
† 5. ellipt. in pl. for ANIMAL SPIRITS. Obs. rare.
1628. D. Dent, Serm. agst. Drunk., 16. Diseases in all the regions of man’s body; in the animalls, vitalls, and naturalls.
1647. Lilly, Chr. Astrol., xliv. 284. The Disease is in the Animals, not in the Body.
B. adj. [In its introduction distinct from ANIMAL sb., and = Fr. animal, ad. L. animāl-is; but mixed up with attributive uses of the sb., so as now to be hardly separable as a whole. As L. animālis was treated sometimes as a deriv. of anima, sometimes of animus, the mediæval use of animālis varied from ‘bestial’ to ‘spiritual,’ and Eng. animal adj. had a similar wide range. Mod. usage connects it with the sb. animal, and not with anima or animus.]
† 1. Connected with sensation, innervation or will; sometimes = psychical. (Opposed to vital and natural; the animal functions being those of the brain and nervous system; the vital of the heart, lungs, etc.; and the natural those of nutrition and assimilation.) See ANIMAL SPIRITS. Obs.
1541. R. Copland, Guydon’s Quest. Cyrurg. The skull … is that parte of the heade … wherin the anymal membres are conteyned.
1586. Bright, Melanch., i. 3. Our actions, whether they be animal or voluntarie, or naturall not depending upon our will.
1656. trans. Hobbes’s Elem. Philos. (1839), 405. Certain motions proceeding from sense, which are called animal motions.
1668. Culpepper & Cole, Barthol. Anat., I. v. 9. This Motion of the Muscles is sometimes called Voluntary, sometimes Animal, to distinguish it from the Natural, in Brutes Stontaneous Ibid., II. vi. 99. The motion of the heart is no Animal motion, but a natural motion.
† 2. Animate, living, organized, as opposed to inanimate. Obs. rare.
1651. W. G., trans. Cowel’s Inst., 67. Animall things cannot be kept … without charge, which is otherwise in inanimate.
3. Of or pertaining to the functions of animals; or of those parts of the nature of man which he shares with the inferior animals. (Thus opposed to intellectual and spiritual).
1651. Jer. Taylor, Course of Serm., I. i. 3. The animal, or the naturall man.
1718. Quincy, Compl. Disp., 111. Acquainted with the Animal Œconomy.
1783. Cowper, Lett., 3 June, Wks. 1876, 132. The season has been most unfavourable to animal life; and I who am merely animal have suffered much by it.
1841. Kingsley, Lett. (1878), I. 51. The Excitement of Animal Exercise.
1868. Freeman, Norm. Conq., II. vii. 39. The mere animal courage of the soldier.
4. Camal, fleshly, as opposed to moral, spiritual.
1533. Hales, Brevis Disq., in Phenix (1708), II. 337. From the 24th Verse [he] shews wherein that diversity of Bodies consisteth, not in the Manners, but in the very Substance of them … these weak, those strong; these animal, those spiritual.
a. 1770. Akenside, Epist. Curio, Wks. 324. Whose native strength of soul … Bursts the tame round of animal affairs.
1879. Froude, Cæsar, ii. 12. The animal nature had grown as strongly as the moral nature, and along with it the animal appetites.
5. Of or pertaining to animals, as opposed to vegetables. (Not separable from the sb. used attrib.)
1646. Sir T. Browne, Pseud. Ep., 133. Whereas in Job, according to the Septuagint … we finde the word Phœnix, yet can it have no animall signification; for therein it is not expressed φοῖνιξ but στέλεχος φοίνικος, the truncke of the Palme tree.
1684. T. Burnet, Th. Earth, I. 197. This is not necessary in plant-eggs or vegetable seeds: but neither doth it seem necessary in all animal-eggs.
1732. Arbuthnot, Rules of Diet, I. 252. The Animal Oils, Cream, Butter, and Marrow.
1855. Kingsley, Glaucus (1878), 186. That the animal and vegetable respirations might counterbalance each other.
C. Comb. and phrases. Here it is often impossible to separate the sb. and adj. (see prec.)
1. attrib. or adj. animal charcoal, that formed by charring animal substance; animal electricity, that developed in certain animals, as the torpedo and electric eel; animal food, animal substances used as food; animal flower, one of the actinozoa, as the sea-anemone; animal heat, the constant temperature maintained within the bodies of living animals; animal kingdom, the whole species of animals viewed scientifically, as one of the three great divisions of natural objects; animal magnetism = MESMERISM; animal magnetist, a mesmerist; animal myth, one founded upon the habits of animals; animal painter, a painter of animals as opposed to landscapes, portraits, or incidents of human action; so animal painting and animal piece; animal plant, a zoophyte or polype, as coral; animal tree, one cut into the outline of an animal; animal world, the world of animals. Also ANIMAL SPIRITS, q.v.
1873. Williamson, Chem., § 56. The presence of the phosphate in this animal charcoal enables the carbon to remove various colouring matters from liquids.
1836–9. Todd, Cycl. Anat. & Phys., II. 81/2. It is in the mode of its development that the chief peculiarity of Animal Electricity consists.
1833. Penny Cycl., I. 102/2. The popular names of animal flowers and sea anemonies, usually applied to the various species of actinia. Ibid., 104/2. The purple animal-flower (Actinia equina).
1847. Carpenter, Zool. (title), The Principal Families of the Animal Kingdom.
1784. H. Walpole, Lett., in Academy (1882), 25 Feb., 139/1. Animal Magnetism has not yet made much impression here.
1786. Lounger (1787), III. 286. The Animal Magnetism of the illustrious Dr. Mesmer.
1860. Jeaffreson, Bk. ab. Doctors, II. 38. Animal magnetism, under the name of mesmerism, has been made familiar of late years to the ears of English people.
1809. Coleridge, Friend (1818), I. 91. I must have forgotten the Animal Magnetists; the proselytes of Brothers, and of Joanna Southcot.
1711. Shaftesb., Charac., III. 378. In animal-pieces; where beasts, or fowl are represented.
1846. Patterson, Zool., 14. The term Zoophyte, literally meaning animal-plant.
1882. St. James’s Gaz., 1 April. This sketch represents an animal-tree.
1835. Swainson, Classif. Quadr., § 15. Aristotle, in his system of the animal world, excludes man from his scheme.
2. similative and synthetic deriv., as animal-minded.
1871. R. H. Hutton, Ess., I. 28. The ignorant and animal-minded millions by whom the earth is mostly peopled.
