Entertainment / Literature / Therianthropic: This adjective refers to any mixture of human and animal traits together in a single description. This leads to two general uses: (1) a poetic device akin to personification, but one in which animal traits are given to a human or to an inanimate object. This contrasts with the usual personification, in which human traits are given to an animal or an inanimate object. For example, poet Carl Sandburg uses therianthroposis when he writes of how 'the fog comes / on little cat feet,' and T.S. Eliot makes a similar analogy between cats and fog in 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.' (2) In the case of many world mythologies, therianthropic figures are mixtures of animal and human features that result in fantastic composite monsters and composite deities combining human and animal features. Examples include the Egyptian crocodile-headed deity Sobek, or the Hindu elephant-headed deity Ganesha, or angels in the Christian tradition which combine avian wings with human bodies. See theriomorphic, below. (Grk, therios [beast] + anthros [man], noun form therianthroposis)
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Entertainment / Literature / Theriomorphic: Another term for therianthropic, above. (Grk, therios [beast] + morphos [shape], noun form theriomorphosis) MORE
Entertainment / Literature / Personification: A trope in which abstractions, animals, ideas, and inanimate objects are given human character, traits, abilities, or reactions. Personification is particularly common in poetry, but it appears in nea MORE
Entertainment / Literature / Composite Monster: (in architecture, often called a chimera after the Greek monster) The term is one mythologists use to describe the fantastical creatures in Assyrian, Babylonian, Greek, and medieval European legends i MORE