“Faunamorph”
A word or phrase that refers to or reflects fauna (animals) in order to describe something other than that animal.
“Floramorph”
A word or phrase that refers to or reflects flora (plant-life) in order to describe something other than that plant.
“Furthermorph”
A word or phrase that refers to things and phenomena in nature that are not faunamorphs or floramorphs.
So, what are faunamorphs, floramorphs and furthermorphs?
Ready to talk turkey? Then let’s not beat around the bush. At one time or another, we’ve probably all used the term “anthropomorphic” or “anthropomorphize” – i.e., to attribute human behavior or characteristics to a being or object not human, especially an animal. Well, fair is fair, so I decided to coin a converse term: “faunamorphic.” In short, just as we humans tend to anthropomorphize animals, we have a strong penchant to “faunamorphize” one another. We love to ascribe animal forms, attributes, behaviors, and traits to humans. When we do so, we employ words or phrases that can be called faunamorphs (my very own, patented/copyrighted, neologism). And the Fauna Morph and Floramorph Lexicon collects and categorizes many thousands of examples as a result of 33 years of ferreting out peachy words and phrases.