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
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Example Sentences
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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
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
Adjective
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The moped passenger, who police said was struck by the truck’s rear wheel, can be seen on the video splayed out unconscious on the street.
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Officers responding to the incident found an unconscious man lying on the sidewalk suffering from at least one gunshot wound.
Adjective
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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.
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But states have used midazolam alone — and at much higher doses — in executions since 2013, claiming the drug will render people insensate to pain before the administration of other lethal injection drugs.
Adjective
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As Micah so nicely puts it, there’s a narrative magnetism to Pitman’s repo encounters, many of which play out as micro-dramas of people in crisis confronting an embodied messenger of the great, unfeeling, deeply unfair American financial system.
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Ditto Hugh Jackman’s unerring performance — perhaps his finest dramatic work yet — as a savage, unfeeling thug and unrepentant murderer and thief.
Adjective
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This is partly because the loss of insentient machinery, no matter how expensive, is easier to stomach than the death of an aircrew.
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But its shortcomings are essentially those of the novel: its single-track didacticism; its neat pitting of romantic idealists against macho, insentient normies; and the fact that a decisive plot twist can be spotted a mile off.
Adjective
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There’s no sugarcoating how lifeless the offense looked this weekend.
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But here, she’s forced into a lifeless film that only has the bones of what could have been a good story about trauma, either being consumed by it or working through it.
Cite this Entry
“Inanimate.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/inanimate. Accessed 5 Jul. 2026.
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