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anthropomorphize

When you talk about a thing or animal as if it were human, you're anthropomorphizing it. The Easter Bunny is an anthropomorphized rabbit.

People anthropomorphize all the time. If you've ever seen a dog in a sweater, that's a small case of an owner anthropomorphizing his pet. A cartoon dog who talks is a bigger case of anthropomorphizing. Shel Silverstein's book The Giving Tree anthropomorphizes the tree — the tree acts as if it were a person. It may seem kind of bizarre, but treating non-human things as human is a way of imagining another point of view.

DEFINITIONS OF: anthropomorphize

1

v ascribe human features to something

Synonyms:
anthropomorphise
Type of:
ascribe, assign, attribute, impute
attribute or credit to
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USAGE EXAMPLES