How to Use anthropomorphize in a Sentence

anthropomorphize

verb
  • Here’s the thing -- the whole idea of anthropomorphizing cats is not that wild.
    — oregonlive.com, 19 July 2019
  • New York is often anthropomorphized as a bad boyfriend who’s both hard to keep and hard to leave.
    — Sari Botton, Longreads, 15 Feb. 2018
  • But they haven’t been anthropomorphized in the same way as other animals.
    — Alex Shoumatoff, Smithsonian, 29 Mar. 2017
  • But they haven’t been anthropomorphized in the same way as other animals.
    — Alex Shoumatoff, Smithsonian, 2 May 2017
  • There’s a great danger to anthropomorphize and to be befuddled when lions don’t behave the same way.
    — National Geographic, 1 Apr. 2016
  • But though the instinct to anthropomorphize is innate, there are circumstances that make someone more likely to do so.
    — Arianna Rebolini, The Atlantic, 18 Aug. 2017
  • Make something soft and face-having, and the human brain will happily anthropomorphize it.
    — Marisa McMillan, Outside, 7 Oct. 2025
  • Many trainers take a dim view of babying and otherwise anthropomorphizing our pets.
    — Peter Haldeman, New York Times, 4 July 2018
  • When those devices have a face or a voice, our impulse is to further anthropomorphize them like our human relationships.
    — Pamela Pavliscak, Quartz, 2 Aug. 2019
  • Critics urge their makers to anthropomorphize their products as little as possible to avoid the worst effects of a broken heart.
    — Tucker Harris, Washington Post, 29 Sep. 2023
  • The blue, the fresh, the ever free Humans have anthropomorphized the ocean to one extent or another for about as long as humans have been around.
    — Lee Hutchinson, Ars Technica, 5 June 2019
  • The still lifes anthropomorphized the fruit, putting them in picture-perfect situations, like two pears watching the sunset.
    — Steven Vargas, Los Angeles Times, 28 June 2023
  • Because as scientists, we’re trained not to anthropomorphize.
    — Shayla Love, Scientific American, 17 Feb. 2023
  • Our tendency to anthropomorphize subjects would have come from the same evolutionary process.
    — IEEE Spectrum, 19 July 2021
  • Many cartoonishly anthropomorphize the virus, giving them googly eyes and emoji-like faces.
    — Washington Post, 9 July 2020
  • As solitaries continue to find their way into the hearts of coastal communities, there is a chance to put our tendency to anthropomorphize them to good use.
    — Cathleen O'Grady, Smithsonian Magazine, 22 July 2020
  • Having once appeared on our cover, Otis is the world's most beloved anthropomorphized avocado.
    — Florian Nicolle, Car and Driver, 11 Dec. 2017
  • His presentation is classification run amok in which colors are anthropomorphized, and the world is recast as a kind of color war.
    — Adam Moss, Vulture, 17 Apr. 2026
  • Please be aware that there is an ongoing and dangerous tendency these days to anthropomorphize AI.
    — Lance Eliot, Forbes, 13 Aug. 2022
  • Some believe that this is an outrageous and flagrant form of anthropomorphizing AI.
    — Lance Eliot, Forbes, 16 Aug. 2024
  • Our sappy human brains and their tendency to anthropomorphize inanimate objects kicked in.
    — Marina Koren, The Atlantic, 27 Aug. 2021
  • There’s something about human nature to anthropomorphize objects or anything.
    — Josh Rottenberg, Los Angeles Times, 28 Sep. 2023
  • For those of us who tend to anthropomorphize our cars, Hey Mercedes might lead to a whole new level of automotive codependence.
    — Ezra Dyer, Car and Driver, 23 Mar. 2020
  • For years, researchers were cautioned not to anthropomorphize their subjects, or bestow human traits upon other animals.
    — Melanie Stetson Freeman, The Christian Science Monitor, 22 Nov. 2024
  • Which may sound like damning with faint praise, but is really just proof that the human brain can adapt to anything and will take any oppor-tuna-ty to anthropomorphize the face of a new automobile.
    — Sam Smith, Car and Driver, 25 July 2023
  • Consider how much greater the tendency and temptation to anthropomorphize is going to get with the introduction of systems that do look and sound human.
    — Nir Eisikovits, The Conversation, 15 Mar. 2023
  • Often people anthropomorphize with good intentions, to explain a concept, process or event—such as a novel virus—that is not easily understood.
    — Sabrina Sholts, Smithsonian Magazine, 5 Mar. 2021
  • Older children tend to anthropomorphize animals more than younger ones do—so maybe the effectiveness of an animal as a teacher depends on the reader's age.
    — Elizabeth Preston, Discover Magazine, 31 Aug. 2017
  • The moon and even a bus also are anthropomorphized by Jessica Martin and Lawrence Weber.
    — Theodore P. Mahne, NOLA.com, 31 Oct. 2017
  • On the one hand, people often anthropomorphize Spot, as evidenced by the controversy over the Spot-kicking video.
    — Jessie Yeung, CNN, 25 Sep. 2019

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'anthropomorphize.' 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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