animus

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin animus (“mind, soul, spirit; desire, courage, anger”),^[2][3][4][5] related to anima (“breath, soul”).^[3][6][2] De Vaan reconstructs Proto-Italic *anamo- (“breath, spirit”) and Proto-Indo-European *h₂enh₁-mo- (“breath”),^[7] and compares Oscan anams, Old Irish anim (“soul”) and Ancient Greek ἄνεμος (ánemos, “wind”).^[7][6] The OED derives it from the same Indo-European base as the Greek word, a suffixed form of a base meaning to breathe.^[2] Etymonline and the American Heritage Dictionary give the root as Proto-Indo-European *ane- (“to breathe”).^[3][8]

Earliest recorded meaning

Feeling or intention that moves a person to act, especially in a hostile way: 1795, in Peake's Cases Nisi Prius.^[2] Barnhart and Merriam-Webster date this English use to 1816, and Etymonline to 1820.^[4][5][3] The OED also records the sense "rational soul, mind" from Old English, in Ælfric's Lives of Saints.^[2]

Semantic evolution

In Latin the word already ranged from the mind as the seat of thought and intention to the mind as the seat of feelings such as anger, pride and courage.^[2] The philosophical use for the rational soul, contrasted with anima, is now historical.^[2][8] The neutral sense "motivating intention" and the hostile one were joined from the first in English, and the hostile one now comes first in most dictionaries.^{[2][9][8][10]} Merriam-Webster keeps the older order, with intention and purpose first, and quotes Lewis Mumford for it.^[11] In 1923 H. G. Baynes used the word in his translation of Jung's Psychological Types for the archetype from which the male aspects of the personality derive, in contrast to the anima.^[2][3]

Timeline

• Old English – the rational soul, mind, in Ælfric.^[2]
• 1795 – motivating feeling or intention, especially hostile; animosity.^[2]
• 1923 – Jung's term for the masculine part of the personality.^[2][3]

Meanings

Noun

1. Strong dislike or ill feeling; hostility or animosity: She made no secret of her animus towards the new director.^{[8][9][12][13]}
2. Motive, intention or purpose; the spirit that moves a person to act.^{[8][9][12][11]}
3. (Jungian psychology) The masculine part of a woman's personality, as present in the unconscious; compare anima.^{[8][9][12][2]}
4. (archaic) The rational soul; the mind.^[8][2]

Related words

• anima
• animosity
• equanimity
• unanimous
• animal
• animate
• magnanimous
• pusillanimous

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
5. ^ a b Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (2003), 11th ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
6. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
7. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
8. ^ a b c d e f g The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
9. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
10. ^ Soanes, Catherine; Stevenson, Angus, eds. (2004), Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 11th ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ a b Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
12. ^ a b c Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
13. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House