anima

Definition

The soul or animating principle of a living thing, especially as contrasted with the animus.

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin anima (“a current of air, wind, air, breath, the vital principle, life, soul”), sometimes equivalent to animus (“mind”), both from Proto-Indo-European *h₂enh₁- (“to breathe, blow”); see animus. Cognate with Ancient Greek ἄνεμος (ánemos, “wind”), Old English anda (“anger, envy, zeal”). More at onde.

Example Sentences

• "[W]e cannot chuse but admire the exceeding vividness of the governing faculty or Anima of the Insect, which is able to dispose and regulate so the motive faculties, as to cause every peculiar organ, not onely to move or act so quick, but to do it also so regularly."
• "In the Jungian model of the psyche, the male has an internalized female counterpart, the anima; while the female has an internalized masculine counterpart, the animus."
• "Dorothy is bodiless and sexless in Tintern Abbey because she is Wordsworth's Jungian anima, an internal aspect of self momentarily projected."

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