That which has no life or soul, such as a mountain or a rock, can be described as inanimate.
With etymological origin in the Latin word inanimātus , inanimate is an adjective that refers to that which lacks a soul . The term also refers to that which does not provide signs of life .
For example: "When the man began to treat the inanimate doll as a person, his relatives began to worry" , "The vehicle was moving at full speed when it encountered an inanimate object that forced the driver to make a sudden maneuver" , "The inanimate being suddenly came to life thanks to the intervention of the fairy."
Pinocchio, from being inanimate to a real child
Although the inanimate is usually associated with the lack of movement or mobility, the concept is not actually linked to the immobile or immovable , but to the lack of soul . This absence of soul as the principle or essence of life means that the inanimate does not belong to the human plane.
It is easy to understand the notion of inanimate from the famous story of Pinocchio . This character created by the Italian writer Carlo Collodi is a wooden puppet: he has no soul or life. However, a fairy turned him into a real child based on the wish of Geppetto , the man who had made the doll. Pinocchio , in this way, stops being inanimate and transforms into a human being.
The question of the inanimate motivates all kinds of philosophical, religious and even scientific debates. An example of the importance of consensus on the existence or absence of a soul occurs in pregnancy. Defining when a set of cells begins to be considered a human being that already has a soul is key to analyzing abortion , to cite one case.
Pinocchio went from being an inanimate doll to a real boy.
The concept in colloquial language
This term is part of a relatively peculiar group since it is not especially rare or difficult to understand but it is not often used in everyday speech either. This is because in an informal conversation we usually adjective those nouns that are not in the focus of our speech but only those that interest us the most and, above all, to express our feelings towards them.
For example, if we tell a friend that the day before we were in a store and bought a coat, we will probably focus on the latter to describe it with adjectives, since it is the object of our interest, and we will not dwell on the characteristics of the building, the neighborhood, the people, etc., as would occur in a literary narrative. That said, when we talk about a piece of furniture or a rock we do not need to clarify that they are inanimate objects, just as we do not clarify that a person or a dog is not.
The inanimate and prosopopoeia
In the field of rhetoric , there is a figure called prosopopoeia or personification that consists of giving inanimate objects, abstract ideas or animals actions or qualities typical of human beings. This belongs to the group of ontological metaphors (ontology is the philosophical branch that studies the relationships between acts and their subjects, as well as between entities).
A classic example of prosopopoeia is found in the following excerpt from the play Phèdre by the French playwright Jean Racine : "With what rigor, Fate, you pursue me!" . In other cases we can see death, nature or the stars, for example, personified. Animals that talk, walk and dress like human beings are also very common in fiction , especially those aimed at children, although not exclusively.
It is worth mentioning that in its origins, the concept of prosopopoeia was defined as the attribution of actions to deceased or absent people, as when talking about what our ancestors would do if they were here.