Animal

How to spell animal

6 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce animal

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does animal mean?

1. nounA living organism that feeds on organic matter, typically able to move and respond to its surroundings.

Animal in a sentence

• The rescue centre takes in every stray animal the city reports.

• Farmers must register each animal kept on the property.

Where does animal come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin animal, meaning 'a living, breathing creature', which was built on anima, the Latin word for 'breath', 'air', or 'the life force', and by extension the soul itself. The Romans saw breath as the very sign of being alive, so anything that drew breath counted as an animal. English took the word in during the late 1300s, replacing the older native term 'deer', which had once meant any wild beast before it narrowed to a single species. The same anima root still breathes through related words such as 'animate', 'animation', and even 'magnanimous'. Because the spelling marches straight through three plain vowel sounds (an-i-mal), the trap for adults is simply hearing and writing the unstressed middle 'i' rather than reaching for an 'e'.

How the word is built

• anim- (from anima: breath, life, soul)
• -al (noun/adjective suffix)