zoomorphize

English

Alternative forms

• zoomorphise

Verb

zoomorphize (third-person singular simple present zoomorphizes, present participle zoomorphizing, simple past and past participle zoomorphized)

1. (transitive) To endow with animal qualities.
   • 1964, Margaret Mead, Continuities in Cultural Evolution:

     This provides for greater communicability but it also introduces new pitfalls, for the possibility of anthropomorphizing birds is at least as great as that of a zoomorphizing man.

   • 2017 August 9, Holly Dunsworth, Anne Buchanan, “Sex makes babies”, in Aeon:

     So evolutionary speculation about the origin of human mating strategies not only rests on science’s tendency to ‘zoomorphise’ us. It also entangles science in a dizzying web of anthropomorphic assumptions about other animals.

See also

• anthropomorphize
• animalize