inanimate

adjective

(ˌ)i-ˈna-nə-mət How to pronounce inanimate (audio)
Definition of inanimatenext
as in unconscious
lacking animate awareness or sensation "pathetic fallacy" is the literary term for the ascription of human feelings or motives to inanimate natural elements

Synonyms & Similar Words

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Antonyms & Near Antonyms

Example Sentences

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
Recent Examples of inanimate But there are inanimate pets in the cemetery. — Jennie Key, Cincinnati Enquirer, 31 Mar. 2026 On the morning after the hurricane, these objects revert to their inanimate status quo—but the deviation has been recorded, as fiction. — Hannah Gold, Harpers Magazine, 24 Mar. 2026 Its lifeworld, its temporal and spatial perspective, contrasts with the human, rendering our characters as distant, as inanimate, as the stelae and sculptures that surround them. — Ben Lerner, The New York Review of Books, 19 Mar. 2026 Suddenly, the buildings were not inanimate beings but creatures of memory and scars. — Matthew Carey, Deadline, 16 Mar. 2026 See All Example Sentences for inanimate
Recent Examples of Synonyms for inanimate
  1. unconscious
  2. insensate
  3. unfeeling
  4. insentient
  5. lifeless
Adjective
  • East Hampton Town police responded to a 911 call from a man reporting a woman unconscious on a boat docked around midnight the day she was pronounced dead, according to last year’s statement.
    — Matt Lavietes, NBC news, 11 Aug. 2026
  • The Enneagram is a leadership consciousness and process map that reveals our gifts and unconscious patterns that can limit our dash story.
    — Catherine Bell, Forbes.com, 10 Aug. 2026
Definition of unconscious
Adjective
  • This insensate gaze is one that cannot be returned, as Jacques Lacan observed of the camera pointed at him during his performative lecture Télévision, recorded in 1973 and broadcast on prime-time TV in France.
    — Jan Tumlir, Artforum, 5 Aug. 2026
  • The brain, like other internal organs, is insensate, its lack of sensory receptors attested by videos of virtuoso violinists who play on unfazed as neurosurgeons go to work inside their skulls.
    — Matthew Ponsford, WIRED, 19 Sep. 2024
Definition of insensate
Adjective
  • Civilizations could have risen to their zenith and crumbled in the time our micrometeoroid spent traversing the unfeeling expanse of interplanetary space, but its demise lasted but a fraction of a second.
    — Anthony Wood, Space.com, 21 July 2026
  • Readers can judge Jane and me, deciding that one of us was unfeeling or uncomprehending.
    — Literary Hub, Literary Hub, 13 July 2026
Definition of unfeeling
Adjective
  • This is partly because the loss of insentient machinery, no matter how expensive, is easier to stomach than the death of an aircrew.
    — Lauren Kahn, Foreign Affairs, 6 June 2023
  • Genes are insentient things and cannot be said to have any kind of purposeful selfish or unselfish behavior.
    — Quanta Magazine, Quanta Magazine, 14 Sep. 2017
Definition of insentient
Adjective
  • The Dodgers have looked lifeless at the plate and vulnerable on the mound while losing eight of their past nine.
    — Bill Plunkett, Oc Register, 9 Aug. 2026
  • He was surrounded by family, twelve sets of hands holding his lifeless body, sending him onward with heartache and love and stunned disbelief.
    — Dr. Lucy McBride, Time, 8 Aug. 2026
Definition of lifeless

Browse Nearby Words

inanes
inanimate
inanimately
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Cite this Entry

“Inanimate.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/inanimate. Accessed 14 Aug. 2026.

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More from Merriam-Webster on inanimate

Nglish: Translation of inanimate for Spanish Speakers

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