Meanings
- nonce worduncountableThe manner in which a dog sees the world, including the attribution of doglike characteristics to non-canine animals, especially humans.
Without anthropomorphism on our part and cynomorphism on the dog's part, it is unlikely that dogs could have been successfully domesticated and eventually come to live in our homes and serve as companions and workmates.
2004, Stanley Coren, How Dogs Think: Understanding the Canine Mind, Free Press, →ISBN, page 2902 more examples
This should teach us to bear in mind that there is, affecting the dog's point of view, almost undoubtedly such a thing as cynomorphism, and that he has his peculiar and limited ideas of life and range of mental vision, and therefore perforce makes his artificial surroundings square with them.
1892 December, Louis Robinson, “Canine Morals and Manners”, in The Popular Science Monthly, page 177Finally, this definition implies the Razor-friendly dualism Nature/Culture, by using a two-way-only approach, from animals to humans and back (zoomorphism), without the pluralistic biosemiotic-friendly suggestion there might be, say, a cynomorphism or at least an icthyomorphism.
2008 December, Dario Martinelli, Kristian Bankov, “Bankov's Razor Versus Martinelli's Canon: A Confrontation Around Biosemiotics”, in Biosemiotics, volume 1, number 3, page 413
Origin
Cite this entry
cynomorphism. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/cynomorphism
“cynomorphism.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/cynomorphism. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “cynomorphism,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/cynomorphism.
Source: cynomorphism on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.