Is it possible to include a CSS class name in jQuery .animate()

With jQuery .animate(), I use to write like .animate({ 'font-size': "24px", 'color': 开发者_如何学C'#555' }, 1000 ) to animate the item as per the CSS attributes.

Is there a way in which I write a css class

.className{
    font-size : "24px";
    color : "#333";
}

and use that class to perform the .animate() function so that I don't have to write all the CSS attributes as the properties of the jquery .animate() function??

It's not "vanilla" jQuery, but jQuery UI has animation for addClass (plus toggle, switch, and remove).