How to Use animate in a Sentence

animate

1 of 2 adjective
  • The lecture was about ancient worship of animate and inanimate objects.
  • To the newcomers, the logjam seemed like an animate part of the landscape.
    Adam M. Sowards, Smithsonian Magazine, 25 May 2023
  • Science is a process, not an animate object that speaks.
    Michael Lynch, Forbes, 26 Apr. 2022
  • Drawing animate objects was forbidden, as on the day of judgment, God would ask me to put life in them.
    Liam Hess, Vogue, 28 Mar. 2022
  • This time the town is not empty but crowded with animate memories.
    Andrew Delbanco, The New York Review of Books, 19 Nov. 2020
  • As such, they should be treated as ‘animate tools,’ instruments rather than ends.
    Lance Eliot, Forbes, 21 June 2022
  • For centuries, the idea of an animate creature made by man and lacking a divine spark or a soul, has been part of the Jewish imagination.
    Los Angeles Times, 3 Mar. 2023
  • Along the way, though, Heard and company animate enough winning moments to make even the creakier passages feel compelling.
    Peter Marks, Washington Post, 22 Aug. 2023
  • Even if researchers agreed one day on a testable definition of AGI, the race to build the world’s first animate algorithm might never have a clear winner.
    Reece Rogers, WIRED, 20 Apr. 2023
  • Some quirkier roles include a research scientist to animate avatars in the metaverse and a video game story writer.
    Paolo Confino, Fortune, 20 Apr. 2023
  • The goal is to persuade the public to look at these landmarks with new eyes, almost viewing them as animate characters with feelings and backstories instead of just objects to walk past.
    Caitlin Morton, Condé Nast Traveler, 17 Oct. 2017
  • The teddy bear cholla cactus, Joshua trees and other flora in the nearby arboretum animate visitors.
    Mark Eddington, The Salt Lake Tribune, 22 July 2023
  • In all of these religions – which include Hellenic paganism, druidry and heathenism, among others – both the Earth and the spirits that are believed to reside in animate and inanimate objects are seen as sacred.
    Helen A. Berger, The Conversation, 20 Oct. 2021
  • Savannah Steiner hadn’t worked on a feature film before ShadowMachine brought her in to help animate Pinocchio.
    Mike Rogoway | Mrogoway@oregonian.com, oregonlive, 19 Mar. 2023
  • Payare’s version was bracingly animate, with clear lines and pure intonation from the orchestra.
    Luke Schulze, San Diego Union-Tribune, 20 Nov. 2022
  • Ethics begins by recognizing that entities of this Earth are both material and animate.
    Kathleen Dean Moore, The Conversation, 20 Oct. 2021
  • Writerly strokes may occasionally feel broad, but like animate oil paintings, their effect is rich and reverberant.
    Joan Frank, Washington Post, 3 May 2023
  • Both distinguish between an animate direct object and an inanimate one.
    The Economist, 1 Feb. 2018
  • In Athabaskan languages, spoken by many Indigenous peoples of the Alaskan interior, glaciers are grammatically treated as animate, like polar bears and people.
    Jonathon Keats, Discover Magazine, 4 Nov. 2020
  • The counterintuitive and sinewy motions of snakes, stingrays, and skydivers represent a strange kind of motion that is notoriously hard to simulate, animate, or anticipate.
    IEEE Spectrum, 3 Sep. 2023
  • At one point, Atung abruptly drops out of the show, eliminating its only source of interpersonal intrigue and allowing Afong to complete her transformation into an animate textbook.
    Vinson Cunningham, The New Yorker, 14 Mar. 2022
  • Several people have stories about more animate luggage.
    Ed Yong, The Atlantic, 23 May 2017
  • Her gospel draws on the individual impulse to tinker, prevalent in early America and throughout its history, and joins it with an appreciation for animate objects developed in her five years as a miko, or shrine maiden, at a Shinto temple.
    Coco Krumme, WIRED, 13 Sep. 2023
  • Research projects include technology using AI to animate children’s drawings, decode speech from imagery of brain activity, and enable real-time translation of most languages.
    Naomi Nix, Washington Post, 14 May 2023
  • Creativity, making, and imagining animate Black self-determination with that which only culture can provide.
    ELLE, 31 Mar. 2022
  • While frequent major overhauls are standard operating procedure in animation (Pixar films can take between four and seven years to plot, animate, and render), those changes typically occur early on during development and storyboarding stages.
    Chris Lee, Vulture, 23 June 2023
  • The lecture was about ancient worship of animate and inanimate objects.
  • To the newcomers, the logjam seemed like an animate part of the landscape.
    Adam M. Sowards, Smithsonian Magazine, 25 May 2023
  • Science is a process, not an animate object that speaks.
    Michael Lynch, Forbes, 26 Apr. 2022
  • Drawing animate objects was forbidden, as on the day of judgment, God would ask me to put life in them.
    Liam Hess, Vogue, 28 Mar. 2022
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animate

2 of 2 verb
  • The writer's humor animates the novel.
  • The film's very realistic dinosaurs were animated on computers.
  • The desire to right past wrongs animates many of the characters in our 10 picks for this month.
    Staff, The Christian Science Monitor, 21 Nov. 2023
  • The strange and the extreme, rather than good taste, animate much of fashion and style today.
    Rachel Tashjian, Harper's BAZAAR, 5 July 2022
  • The back-and-forth between Brooks and James grew animated in the second half.
    oregonlive, 20 Apr. 2023
  • Far less attention has been paid to the ideas that animate the IRA.
    Robinson Meyer, The Atlantic, 18 Aug. 2022
  • Undersized, animated and topping out the radar gun in the high 80s, Romo was the kid of the group.
    Ann Killion, San Francisco Chronicle, 28 Mar. 2023
  • Could Brill have animated the rest of her ski-less day?
    Vulture, 3 Apr. 2023
  • And yes, part of the crossover episode will be animated in a similar style just to keep things fun.
    Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica, 24 May 2023
  • Plus, the anti-slip bottom ensures that the bed stays in place even during the most animated of naps.
    Amber Smith, Discover Magazine, 24 May 2023
  • In 2001, the pair teamed up again for the hybrid live-action and animated children’s sitcom, Lizzie McGuire.
    Esme Mazzeo, Peoplemag, 11 Dec. 2023
  • And instead of flowers, use large candles and fall fruits like pears to animate the table.
    Hadley Mendelsohn, House Beautiful, 7 Nov. 2022
  • And it’s that issue that will likely animate the debate the losing party needs to have when all the votes are counted.
    Chuck Todd, NBC News, 4 Nov. 2022
  • Many of them expressed excitement for their story to be told in a film, but none were quite as animated as Sadaf.
    Marie Margolius, Time, 24 Aug. 2023
  • But when Barts took office, the district’s growing pains were not what seemed to animate the people who came to school-board meetings.
    Charles Homans, New York Times, 5 Aug. 2023
  • Even when war isn’t the subject, the multisensory shock of war lingers in works that animate the senses.
    Philip Kennicott, Washington Post, 15 Dec. 2023
  • An adjacent space exhibits some of the puppets the filmmaker animated, as well as props used to make the videos.
    Mark Jenkins, Washington Post, 27 Oct. 2023
  • Now her new memoir animates the same land while excavating the past in prose.
    Hannah Giorgis, The Atlantic, 14 Oct. 2023
  • Here are four themes animating Tuesday’s election: Wisconsin could turn sharply back to the left — or not.
    Reid J. Epstein, New York Times, 4 Apr. 2023
  • Yet the most eyebrow-raising aspect of the movie, in light of Ritchie’s career, is the bone-deep humanity that animates the story.
    Owen Gleiberman, Variety, 18 Apr. 2023
  • The film is directed by Roland Lane and animated by Cinesite.
    Naman Ramachandran, Variety, 9 Jan. 2024
  • Fun fact: Each part of Spider-Punk’s body was animated at a different frame rate.
    Richard Newby, Vulture, 12 June 2023
  • He was animated rounding the bases, turning to the Sox dugout between first and second and screaming to exhort his teammate.
    Alex Speier, BostonGlobe.com, 25 Aug. 2023
  • And there’s various different worlds where Spider-Folk live and some of them are live-action, and some of them are animated, and some of them are who knows what.
    Brian Hiatt, Rolling Stone, 6 June 2023
  • Several computer algorithms for this have been written in the last 20 years, and some of them even animate the process.
    Dave Linkletter, Popular Mechanics, 22 July 2022
  • Crisp-soft slices of summer squash animated by garlic-chile oil.
    Bill Addison, Los Angeles Times, 21 Sep. 2023
  • There’s only so many ways to punch a man, and Insomniac seems determined to animate them all.
    Gene Park, Washington Post, 16 Oct. 2023
  • In part, this is a convention of the series, since everyone must live to animate another book.
    David L. Ulin, Los Angeles Times, 28 July 2022
  • The memoir is animated by the question of how Sante kept her identity secret from herself and from others for nearly six decades.
    Emily Witt, The New Yorker, 21 Mar. 2024
  • Even on a slower afternoon, though, the heart animating the place was unmistakable.
    Bill Addison, Los Angeles Times, 16 Mar. 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'animate.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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