animisticadj.

1869 Appleton's Jrnl. 31 July 567/1 If a man is alive and moving, the animistic explanation is that his soul, a thin, ethereal, not immaterial being in the man's likeness, is within him animating him.

1871 E. B. Tylor Primitive Culture I. 268 Its [sc. mythology's] animistic development falls within a broader generalization still.

1880 Atlantic Monthly No. 268. 213 The doctrine of the immortality of the soul has become so entangled with animistic fancies.

1881 T. H. Huxley in Nature No. 615. 344 The essence of modern, as contrasted with ancient, physiological science, appears to me to lie in its antagonism to animistic hypotheses and animistic phraseology.

1882 Jrnl. Anthropol. Inst. 373 The simple animistic belief in the continued existence of the spirit.

1935 D. Carter China Magnificent i. 14 The solidly entrenched animistic beliefs of the unlettered masses.

1980 H. Hood None Genuine without this Signature 82 We have not left behind the animistic universe of the cave-dwellers or the nomadic huntsmen.

2000 T. Hall To Elephant Graveyard (2001) ii. 52 Many of the hill tribes of the North-East Frontier..were never converted to Hinduism by the Aryans, sticking instead to their own animistic religions.

1884 Brit. Q. Rev. 79 439 The doctrine of transubstantiation in the Romish Church..is the same thing, only that the new element is animistically imparted to the food, instead of being taken from it.

1942 Mind 51 3 Speaking animistically, but obliged by the prestige of science to speak jokingly, ‘My car goes when she chooses.’

2003 P. R. Robbins Understanding Psychol. (ed. 3) vii. 114/2 Studies testing Piaget's ideas have found that young children..do indeed respond animistically at times.