More from PIE than latin right? if i'm not mistaken, by the time latin was a thing animal meant "living thing [that breathes]" and breath would have been respirare. You have anima, but it's more like life/soul as i understand it. But I speak spanish as a second language so most of my latin knowledge is working backwards from that so I could be off base.
ah right on, probably true both ways when you go that far back. It gets a little fuzzy once you get into PIE territory but even anima can have connotations to wind/air so I assume they probably had some spirtualist/animist view of air/wind/breathing as an important/vital part of life. Anyway I was just curious cuz I like words and stuff.
Latinist here, it comes from anima which does mean breath but more importantly has a connotation of soul. Interestingly though animal is a neuter noun which is a category reserved almost exclusively for objects(and in some cases non objects viewed as objects i.e. slaves).
![Hmm, I wonder what "animal" means in latin. [CW: sinophobia]](https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/Z8ggxM1hZn.png){kind=link}
(for my fellow non linguists, the english word animal comes from the Latin word for breath)
More from PIE than latin right? if i'm not mistaken, by the time latin was a thing animal meant "living thing [that breathes]" and breath would have been respirare. You have anima, but it's more like life/soul as i understand it. But I speak spanish as a second language so most of my latin knowledge is working backwards from that so I could be off base.
Wait, the word for animal comes from pies?!
I'm guessing it's from the Cornish dialect?
get off chapo, dad
I just googled "animal etymology," don't trust me
ah right on, probably true both ways when you go that far back. It gets a little fuzzy once you get into PIE territory but even anima can have connotations to wind/air so I assume they probably had some spirtualist/animist view of air/wind/breathing as an important/vital part of life. Anyway I was just curious cuz I like words and stuff.
Understandable, and very neat
Latinist here, it comes from anima which does mean breath but more importantly has a connotation of soul. Interestingly though animal is a neuter noun which is a category reserved almost exclusively for objects(and in some cases non objects viewed as objects i.e. slaves).