In the northern hemisphere, Old Man Winter is finally giving way to springtime flowers, as Mother Nature coaxes new leaves to unfurl from the budding trees and the birds come back to build their nests among the tender foliage. Are you filled with energy and motivation to take your vocabulary study to the next level, envisioning yourself a triumphant winged Victory, or are you begging Father Time for more room in your schedule? No matter what your situation is, we hope that reading The Vocabulary Builder’s Blog each week will help bring new life to your study program, giving you the tips you need to overcome your obstacles – and of course interesting and useful words to learn.

Today’s word is anthropomorphic, as you might have guessed from the previous paragraph. This word is the adjectival form of the noun anthropomorphism, something that has been part of human culture since the beginning. We relate best to things that are similar to us, and so early people looked at rock formations and saw faces, listened to the howl of the wind and heard voices, and assigned human attributes and personalities to these natural phenomena. If you’re familiar with Aesop’s fables, you’ll recognize the characters of the vain crow, the wily fox, the industrious ant, and the lazy grasshopper, all acting like our friends, neighbors, and ourselves. The word comes from the Greek roots anthropos (“human”) and morphe (“form”), and was often used to describe gods and animals who took human shapes to interact with people.

We’re still prone to assigning human emotions to animals these days, and even to inanimate objects. Any pet owner will have a hundred examples of their cat or dog acting “just like a person!” and most of us have yelled at a malfunctioning machine, talked back to our computer, or coaxed a sputtering car to make it to the next service station, please, just a little bit farther down the road, you can do it … Of course, we know that the car isn’t really feeling a new sense of encouragement from our words, but instinctively we’ve assigned it a personality and are doing our best to try to work with it.

As technology advances, it’s going to be harder and harder to distinguish between people and machines, as you’ll know if you’ve been following the latest developments in robotic technology. Take a look at this video and you’ll see what we mean. But remember that even though machines may look like us, we’re still the ones who teach them the words they use to communicate, so keep on with your vocabulary studies – it will help you in the coming robot apocalypse.