as in to poison
to make (someone) feel or behave more like an animal than a human being
six months of solitary living in the jungle would animalize anyone
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Recent Examples of animalize
Sociologist Anthony Cortese found that in popular culture black women are often othered, animalized and exoticized, associating women of color with primitivity or wild sexuality.
—
Katie Edwards, Washington Post, 14 July 2017
Katie Edwards, Washington Post, 14 July 2017
Recent Examples of Synonyms for animalize
Verb
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Years later, the toxic chemicals have poisoned Hong-rang’s body.—
Kayti Burt,
Time,
16 May 2025
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And two, baking soda is an indiscriminate weed killer that poisons the soil.—
Brandee Gruener,
Southern Living,
16 May 2025
Verb
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In a display of brute aggression, cartel operatives humiliated Mexican officials by forcing the government to release Mr. Guzmán López shortly after he was captured.—
Alan Feuer,
New York Times,
7 May 2025
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But in Trump’s White House, the goal may be simpler—and harder: not getting humiliated.—
Nik Popli,
Time,
5 May 2025
Verb
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The post was a joke, and perhaps an effective one, maximizing the distance between Studio Ghibli’s tender, bittersweet, profoundly human ethos and the gleeful, dehumanizing viciousness that is Trump’s stock-in-trade.—
Jia Tolentino,
New Yorker,
3 May 2025
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Garcia was detained in March and deported to his native El Salvador, where he is being held in a system where human beings are routinely dehumanized.—
Colin Pascal,
Baltimore Sun,
27 Apr. 2025
Verb
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The last time a Padres bullpen was brutalized like this over a five-game stretch was in 1977.—
Kevin Acee,
San Diego Union-Tribune,
13 May 2025
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Here in Los Angeles, as in much of coastal California where the roads and highways are broken and brutalized due to overpopulation, a plush airbag suspension paired with this punchy hybrid powertrain would serve well, very well indeed.—
Mark Ewing,
Forbes,
22 Mar. 2025
Cite this Entry
“Animalize.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/animalize. Accessed 22 May. 2025.
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