Definition of political animal in English:

political animal


  • A person who is interested in social and political issues, especially one who actively participates in politics:

    ‘he was a widely experienced and articulate political animal’
    • ‘Being political animals, Democrats too often take the most politically expedient path.’
    • ‘I have always said that political parties needed political animals in their representation.’
    • ‘And that's not because Isabella led a cloistered life in a daintily female sphere: she was a political animal through and through, who placed herself at the centre of the tumultuous convulsions of her husband's reign.’
    • ‘Yet, European integration has become a highly political exercise, and the EU's institutions have evolved into highly political animals.’
    • ‘We are at the mercy of political animals who will do whatever they think will get them the most votes.’
    • ‘He is a political animal first, vice president later.’
    • ‘Some cartoonists are intensely political animals.’
    • ‘She is not a party political animal, but has superb networking and people skills.’
    • ‘She has always been that most unusual of political animals - the politician who not only wants power but knows exactly what they want to do with it.’
    • ‘She was, as befits the mother of an emperor, a political animal.’
    • ‘They were simply trying to point out that he was a political animal, someone hunting for issues and talking points, someone who, if he has an interior life, would never share it.’
    • ‘Few political animals are less reptilian than the Liberal Democrat leader: there is nothing of the night about him, and everything of the burrow-dwelling mammal.’
    • ‘A higher level of analysis focuses on human actors as rational and political animals, and more particularly on the means by which policies grounded in uncertainty became credible.’
    • ‘On the left politically, he was not at heart a political animal, and was regarded with wariness and mistrust by leftist circles in Italy.’
    • ‘I think he's someone who lives for politics, he's a complete political animal, and he certainly is going to be a major player somewhere in the future.’
    • ‘A Liberal cabinet minister is, by definition, a cynical political animal, but a well-educated one who purports to represent the electorate of a downtown Toronto riding is the worst.’
    • ‘I have to admit that I'm not usually much of a political animal.’
    • ‘For such a view subscribes to the fiction that the judiciary is entirely independent from the executive: judges, we know, are truly political animals.’
    • ‘He is not a political animal in terms of the human sensibilities successful pols usually exude - an acute empathy for how others are reacting to him, the neediness for personal affection.’