MEANING
Lifeless or without animation, sometimes suggesting a body emptied of spirit or feeling.
Use it for
Describe something lifeless with a formal, unsettling edge.Give a corpse, stare, or room a sense of life drained away rather than simple stillness.
Words that belong together
- exanimate body
- exanimate stare
- exanimate figure
On the page
The exanimate figure lay beneath the chapel’s collapsed arch.
Nearby words
Opposite meanings
Word forms
- Base
- exanimate
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Usage notes
A rare literary adjective; it can mean physically lifeless or, more broadly, spiritless. “Inanimate” usually refers to something never alive.
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