Definition of: animal

(an′ə·məl) noun
1. A sentient living organism typically endowed with voluntary motion and sensation: distinguished from plant.
2. Any such creature as distinguished from man; a beast or brute.
3. A debased and bestial human being.
4. plural Domestic quadrupeds.
5. Any creature but a bird, fish, or insect.
—adjective
1. Of or pertaining to animals.
2. Bestial. Synonyms (noun): beast, brute, fauna. An animal is a sentient being, distinct from inanimate matter and from vegetable life on the one side and from purely mental and spiritual existence on the other. Man is properly classified as an animal, but to call any individual man an animal is to imply that the animal nature has undue supremacy. The brute is the animal viewed as dull to all finer feeling; the beast is looked upon as a being of appetites. Creature is a word of wide signification, including inanimate objects, plants, animals, angels, or men as divinely created. The animals of a region are collectively called its fauna. Antonyms: angel, man, matter, mind, mineral, soul, spirit, vegetable.