1. In linguistics, the grammatical or semantic property of a noun or noun phrase that indicates whether it refers to a living, conscious being or an inanimate object.
Usage: technical term used in linguistics and grammar; often used to explain grammatical patterns across languages

Examples

• The animacy of a noun affects how it can be used in certain grammatical constructions.
• In many languages, animacy determines whether a noun takes a particular case or agreement marker.
• The distinction between animate and inanimate nouns is a key feature of animacy in linguistic analysis.
• Linguists study animacy to understand how languages categorize entities as living or non-living.
• The animacy hierarchy ranks nouns from most animate (humans) to least animate (abstract objects).