animalist

English

Etymology

animal +‎ -ist

Noun

animalist (plural animalists)

1. (philosophy) One who believes in the dominance of man's animal nature in behavior.
   • 2002, Brian Garrett, Personal Identity and Self-Consciousness, Routledge, →ISBN, page 21:

     The animalist’s claim that all persons must be animals, if true, will have to be a posteriori truth.

   • 2011, Shaun Gallagher, The Oxford Handbook of the Self, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 145:

     The hard question for the animalist is whether bodily continuity is necessary for the survival of the animal and, if so, what kind of bodily continuity.

2. A sensualist.
   • 2015, Gretchen Schultz, Sapphic Fathers, University of Toronto Press, →ISBN, page 34:

     Whether spiritualist or animalist, Baudelaire's representations of sexuality establish contradictions and raise questions that both exemplify the author's dualistic thinking and reveal the unravelling of antithesis in his work.

3. (art) A painter or sculptor whose primary subject is animals.

   Synonym: animalier

   • 1927, Hamilton Easter Field, editor, The Arts, volume 11:

     And in my opinion, the reason we have so few good animalists among modern artists is because the domestication of species and man's development have obscured their deeper visual significance for most of us.

4. (literature) A writer of animal stories.
5. An animal liberationist.
6. (rare) One who believes that microorganisms cause disease.

Related terms

• animalism

Translations

painter or sculptor whose primary subject is animals

• Catalan: animalista (ca) m or f
• Polish: animalista (pl) m, animalistka f
• Portuguese: animalista m or f
• Spanish: animalista (es) m or f

Further reading

• “animalist”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
• “animalist”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.

Anagrams

• Tamilians