How to Use animism in a Sentence

animism

noun
  • This native animism will take on special importance in the case of Lenin.
    — Olga Ingurazova, Smithsonian, 29 Sep. 2017
  • Oyeyemi’s prose is propelled by a subtle animism; her sentences sometimes seem to contain the whole book in miniature.
    — Katy Waldman, New Yorker, 18 Aug. 2025
  • The ancient records don’t give a name, and Shinto is a form of animism that believes in countless gods that lie behind the forces of nature.
    — Martin Fackler, New York Times, 28 Mar. 2025
  • Before science, the flash of lighting that followed a crack of thunder was the will of Greek gods or a violent outcropping of animism.
    — Kyle Hill, Discover Magazine, 2 July 2013
  • When attempting to explain love (and later, death), Heti slips from her biblical register into a kind of animism.
    — Washington Post, 16 Feb. 2022
  • His witchcraft is heavily informed by animism, or the belief that everything possesses a spirit.
    — Scottie Andrew, CNN, 26 Oct. 2024
  • It’s based on my father’s writing about his life; about colonization, animism, immigration, and his mother who was a Yoruba priest and dancer.
    — Liam Freeman, Vogue, 31 July 2021
  • Indeed, animism—the openness to subjectivity in any form, in a living world that is far more than human—is still the default view and practice of many indigenous cultures.
    — Colin Cepuran, Harpers Magazine, 24 Feb. 2026
  • Mountains in Korea are sacred places in animism and shamanism, whose traces can still be seen in Korean Seon Buddhism.
    — Condé Nast Traveler, 31 Dec. 2021
  • The game’s art director, Son Tra Le added that there is an element of animism in Vietnamese culture and religion.
    — George Yang, Wired, 17 May 2021
  • Strands of atheist thought can be found in non-theistic traditions such as Buddhism, Jainism and Hinduism, as well cultures around the world that practice animism.
    — Harmeet Kaur, CNN, 10 Mar. 2024
  • To dismiss animism as ignorant, superstitious, or atavistic is to partake in modern parochialism, and this serves the interests of those who, like the tree’s killers, delight in destroying life.
    — Colin Cepuran, Harpers Magazine, 24 Feb. 2026
  • Do psychedelics open a pathway to theories about consciousness like panpsychism and animism—belief systems in which everything in the world—animals, plants, even rocks—are conscious or have some spiritual essence?
    — Peter Rubin, Longreads, 26 Aug. 2024
  • Borck argues that neuroscience has something in common with animism, the religious belief that spirits inhabit various objects.
    — Neuroskeptic, Discover Magazine, 16 June 2016
  • The guiding philosophy melds the Buddhist principles of karma—cause and effect; that bad deeds will be repaid in kind—with Bon animism, which teaches respect for all sentient beings.
    — By Charlie Campbell/gelephu, Bhutan, TIME, 16 Jan. 2025
  • Her work draws on talismans of animism and Christianity, suggesting the way those traditions overlapped and intermingled in Africa.
    — Mark Jenkins, Washington Post, 7 July 2023
  • What Si-Qin proposes is a sort of cyber-age animism that rejects traditional Western divisions between human and nature, mind and body, and life and death.
    — Mark Jenkins, Washington Post, 6 Nov. 2020
  • There’s a lot of conceptual overlap here with animism, anthropologists’ (historically derogatory) term for a belief system that says everything is alive or imbued with spirit.
    — Sigal Samuel, Vox, 4 June 2024
  • The label, riffing on motifs, iconography, animism and proverbs from across the African continent, was a way for Masekela to pick up the elder Masekela’s mantle and stoke curiosity in the West.
    — Kathryn Romeyn, The Hollywood Reporter, 2 Apr. 2022
  • Lawson draws viewers in with her use of magical realism to illustrate the history and practices of animism — a belief system built around the idea that all animals, plants, places and inanimate objects have a soul — in African culture.
    — Addie Morfoot, Variety, 22 June 2022
  • Crowds regularly throng the streets for one of the countless ceremonies that honor everything from trees and animals to birth and cremation—Balinese Hinduism is a mash-up of animism and Buddhism.
    — Alex Postman, Condé Nast Traveler, 16 Nov. 2018
  • The tradition of spirit houses dates back centuries, long before the arrival of Buddhism in Thailand, and is related to animism, the belief that spirits inhabit all elements of the natural world—mountains, trees, rivers, etc.
    — Jim Halterman, IndieWire, 24 Feb. 2025
  • The cosmology of spirits in Thailand — a Buddhist-majority nation with crosscurrents of Hinduism, Chinese ancestor worship, and animism — is vast.
    — Adam Dean, BostonGlobe.com, 13 June 2020
  • Abbas devoted the next few years to chronicling other religions and beliefs, including Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism and animism, which is the belief that animals and plants have a spiritual essence.
    — Matt Schudel, Washington Post, 28 Apr. 2018
  • Similar jijingu have been found across the Baekje kingdom’s capital, and offer a window into religious observances at the time—a mix of indigenous Korean animism combined with outside Buddhist and Chinese influences.
    — Andrew Paul, Popular Science, 16 Oct. 2025

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'animism.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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