Quote Originally Posted by zxc View Post
That's what he said after that.
Ah, so his logic was the following: animate is like animated that is something that moves and lives. So body parts should be animate.

But in Russian "animate" - одушевленный, "which has a soul", so this logic is not apparent for me. BTW in Latin "anima" also means "soul". "Animate" in fact is not just something living and moving (like a body part) but something that makes an impression of possessing its own will. So the word "цыпленок" is animate (independently of its current fried condition) and "тело" is not animate because it's a soul that possess body, not vice versa.