suspended animation

noun

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Definition of suspended animation

1 : temporary suspension of the vital functions (as in persons nearly drowned)

2 : a condition (such as inactivity) likened to suspended animation

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Examples of suspended animation in a Sentence

animals that sleep through the winter in a state of suspended animation the husband's feeling that their love life was in suspended animation while his wife lavished all her attention on the new baby

Recent Examples on the Web One solution long championed by science fiction is suspended animation, or putting humans in a hibernation-like sleep for the duration of travel time. — CNN, 28 Dec. 2020 With the agreements with Mexico and Central American in suspended animation during the pandemic, Title 42 is necessary stopgap that Biden will come under intense pressure from pro-immigration groups to reverse. — The Editors, National Review, 15 Nov. 2020 Four days after the election, the U.S. presidential race hovered in suspended animation Saturday as the long, exacting work of counting votes brought Democrat Joe Biden ever closer to a victory over President Donald Trump. — Staff And Wire Reports, chicagotribune.com, 7 Nov. 2020 New York City, where nearly 24,000 people have died from COVID-19, remains in a kind of suspended animation more than six months after the disease raced across its five boroughs and crippled America's largest metropolis. — Megan Cerullo, CBS News, 1 Oct. 2020 Good employment numbers, stock-market uncertainty, New York City’s suspended animation, and more. — Andrew Stuttaford, National Review, 4 Sep. 2020 And more speculatively, such methods might one day approximate the musings about suspended animation that turn up in the movies. — Simon Makin, Scientific American, 15 June 2020 Welcome to the Great Shutdown, as wide swaths of the American economy enter suspended animation to combat the spread of the coronavirus. — Anders Melin, Bloomberg.com, 5 May 2020 The idea is to keep us in suspended animation until the worst of the danger has passed. — John Gurda, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 30 Apr. 2020

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'suspended animation.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

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Dictionary Entries Near suspended animation

suspend between

suspended animation

suspended cadence

Statistics for suspended animation

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“Suspended animation.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/suspended%20animation. Accessed 2 Aug. 2021.

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More Definitions for suspended animation

suspended animation

noun

English Language Learners Definition of suspended animation

: a state in which the processes of the body (such as blood circulation) stop or become very slow for a period of time while a person or animal is unconscious

See the full definition for suspended animation in the English Language Learners Dictionary

suspended animation

noun

sus·pend·ed animation | \ sə-ˈspend-əd-