An organized living creature endowed with sensation. The Levitical law divided animals into clean and unclean, although the distinction seems to have existed before the Flood (Genesis 7:2). The clean could be offered in sacrifice and eaten. All animals that had not cloven hoofs and did not chew the cud were unclean. The list of clean and unclean quadrupeds is set forth in the Levitical law (Deuteronomy 14:3-20; Leviticus 11).

Noah Webster's New International Dictionary of the English Language

1. (n.) An organized living being endowed with sensation and the power of voluntary motion, and also characterized by taking its food into an internal cavity or stomach for digestion; by giving carbonic acid to the air and taking oxygen in the process of respiration; and by increasing in motive power or active aggressive force with progress to maturity.

2. (n.) One of the lower animals; a brute or beast, as distinguished from man; as, men and animals.

3. (a.) of or relating to animals; as, animal functions.

4. (a.) Pertaining to the merely sentient part of a creature, as distinguished from the intellectual, rational, or spiritual part; as, the animal passions or appetites.

5. (a.) Consisting of the flesh of animals; as, animal food.