As for me, furry is a form of art (expressed in various way from simply drawing to fursuiting) that focus primarily on anthropomorphic animals.
at least, this is my personal opinion.

Ah, might need to be more specific. What I meant say was what "furry" means when applied to a person, AKA being a "furry".

Oh... well, always speaking only for myself, I see it as simply enjoying drawing furry characters (or writing stories or just having fantasies). I'm sorry, I believe that's of very much help right?

To me it's just someone who personally identifies with being a furry, as like you said, we all have our own definition.

I consider myself a furry because I have a fursona that I based loosely on myself. She isn't even anthropomorphic (because I can only draw ferals) but to me it doesn't matter. I have a friend who I don't think specifically even thinks of his own fursona as being much more than another character, I have a few friends who fursuit (I don't think one of them even HAS a Fursona) and I have a friend who recently scrapped her fursona entirely, but still draws furry art. And all of those people are people I think of as furries.

"Furry" to me is pretty simple like how many people think about it - having a appreciation for art and literature involving anthro animals. Commonly, however, the term for most people these days, refer to people who tend to take things a bit too far, like acting like actual animals, dressing up in furry costumes, or drawing extreme sexual oriented pictures about anthro animals. I'm not the second type, but rather the first type, but to prevent myself from being associated to the second defintion of "Furry", I tend to call "Furry" as "anthropormorphic animals" or "Anthros" for short.

I've been wondering this myself. While I don't like to use the term to refer to myself, nevertheless the way I define it, I am included within it. I don't like to define it solely as those with sexual perversions involving animals--but it has to be narrower than merely liking anthropomorphism in art and literature, otherwise a majority of people would be "furries" and a label would be pointless. And someone who personally identifies as such is no definition at all.

I define it thus: a "furry" is someone who likes gratuitous anthropomorphism in art and literature. That is, a "furry" is someone who wouldn't mind even if the art or story would be identical if the characters were human.

Case in point: an average reader reads an adult novel. Without being told otherwise, he will naturally assume the main character is human. If he is told that the main character is, say, a wolf, he will assume unless told otherwise that it is a realistic wolf (four legs, no clothes, living in a den, hunting raw meat, etc.). If he finds that this wolf (pointy ears, muzzle, whiskers, tail, paws and claws) wears clothes, lives in an apartment, drinks beer and works at an office, it is at this point that the "furry" and the "non-furry" are separated. The "non-furry" will assume that this anthropomorphism is important to the story--that the story is at least partly about that (alien? genetically modified animal? fantasy race? etc.?), as in a science fiction or fantasy milieu. Consequently, if the anthropomorphism is gratuitous, such that the character could be human and the story would be identical, the non-furry will be disappointed--but the "furry" will not.

Does that make sense? What does everyone else think?