Words - skip - Brewer’s

Animosity

means animation, spirit, as the fire of a horse, called in Latin equi animosʹitas. Its present exclusive use in a bad sense is an instance of the tendency which words originally neutral have to assume a bad meaning. (Compare churl, villain.)

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.