Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. The act of personifying.
- n. A person or thing typifying a certain quality or idea; an embodiment or exemplification: "He's invisible, a walking personification of the Negative” ( Ralph Ellison).
- n. A figure of speech in which inanimate objects or abstractions are endowed with human qualities or are represented as possessing human form, as in Hunger sat shivering on the road or Flowers danced about the lawn. Also called prosopopeia.
- n. Artistic representation of an abstract quality or idea as a person.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. The act of personifying; specifically, in rhetoric, a figure of speech, or a species of metaphor, which consists in representing inanimate objects or abstract notions as endued with life and action, or possessing the attributes of living beings; prosopopœia: as, “the floods clap their hands,” “the sun rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race” “the mountains and the hills shall break forth into singing,”etc.
- n. Embodiment; impersonation.
- n. In art, the representation in the form of person of something abstract, as a virtue or vice, or of an aggregation, as a race or nation, a body of doctrines, etc.
Wiktionary
- n. A person, thing or name typifying a certain quality or idea; an embodiment or exemplification.
- n. A figure of speech, prosopopeia, in which an inanimate object or an abstraction is given human qualities.
- n. An artistic representation of an abstract quality as a human
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. The act of personifying; impersonation; embodiment.
- n. (Rhet.) A figure of speech in which an inanimate object or abstract idea is represented as animated, or endowed with personality; prosopop�ia.
WordNet 3.0
- n. representing an abstract quality or idea as a person or creature
- n. a person who represents an abstract quality
- n. the act of attributing human characteristics to abstract ideas etc.
Examples
“All that alpha male personification is just too wonderful to pass up.”
“Like the Arab the Indian is profuse in personification; but the doctrine of pre-existence, of incarnation and emanation and an excessive spiritualism ever aiming at the infinite, makes his imagery run mad.”
“If you gotta go, then Gaiman's Death personification is not a half bad way to do it!”
“This theory is sometimes called personification of natural forces, but only in the sense that nature is conceived as living, as vital with creative and preservative powers.”
“Recycling the personification of theory as "de Man," he alternately ignores or dismisses theory's critique of personification (personification, that is, as an inevitable but endlessly unstable trope), and necessarily repeats in negative form the fetishizing gesture of the transference.”
Professing Literature: John Guillory's Misreading of Paul de Man
“[228] This chivalrous gentleman, well known as the personification of integrity and honour, had resided many years in the Islands and spoke Tagálog fluently.”
“If the question of "What Is A Jew" is defined as the personification not of the idea embodied by the Talmud, but of an extremely narrow definition of Jewish practice and life, heretofore not accepted by normative Judaism, then the "crisis" shall continue at the fever pitch it now, sadly, but appropriately, deserves.”
“Don't forget to touch on the idea of personification with your homeschooler, as it relates to Humphrey the hamster.”
“There are different phases of going from mind fullness to god fullness, in these steps there will come a state where there will be a little bit of mind left which will give the illusions or personification, that is where people like Meera were when they say they saw Krishna as a blue skinned person, it is the mind which plays the trick, yes they had felt god, but i believe after someone asked them they tried to describe it then the little bit of mind they have will come and fill in the words to describe it, the moment god is described it will become duality, as you define god from what is not to what is.”
“Most show an easy mastery of terms such as personification and alliteration.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘personification’.
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EN - fine scholarly language
exhort, accretion, twenty-nine, atrophy, additive, brilliantly, interreligious, empiricism, pathologic, limitless, half-century, vigilant and 488 more...
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
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Rhetorical Devices
trope, wellerism, antimetabole, syncope, open-list, accismus, abating, abbaser, abecedarian, abcisio, ablatio, abominatio and 425 more...
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Rhetoric: The Harlot of the Arts
Words to do with rhetoric--study of, history of, practice of, theory of
rhetoric, paralepsis, invention, arrangement, style, memory, delivery, copia, consubstantiation, trope, colon, tricolon and 56 more...
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Emblematics
Sigility: avatars and representative figures. Types of symbols: academic, religious, abstract.
avatar, representative, emblem, sigil, semiotics, personification, totemic, creaturism, placeholder, iconolatry, egregore, thoughtform and 24 more...
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LIT - stylistic schemes & rhetorical ...
polyptoton, polysyndeton, aureation, pleonasm, anacoluthon, anadiplosis, anaphora, anastrophe, antistrophe, antithesis, aporia, aposiopesis and 34 more...
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Shadowkeir's list
This list, the one shown below this very message, is a collection of words that you cannot begin to fathom how much I adore. The list will also feature atithesis and contrasting words such as the t...
wishful, anticlimactic, forte, monchromatic, septic, wonderous, isoclinal, deformed, disintergrate, favourite, laughable, awe-inspiring and 250 more...
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Aequoria's list
affect, deleterious, nuance, pliant, verbatim, pertinent, latter, municipality, provincial, voyeuristic, circumlocution, wane and 798 more...
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Jacqueline's Words
glittery, horny, amazing, wanderlust, forlorn, lustily, nonchalant, cool, passive, submissive, roundabout, carousel and 558 more...
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AP Rhetorical Devices
asyndeton, aphorism, polysyndeton, characterize, antagonist, antihero, audience, diction, foil, mood, motif, protagonist and 153 more...
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MsHalston's Words
theoretically, insufferable, apolitico, milquetoast, egregious, aplomb, elan, fraught, flummox, befrocked, moll, molten and 605 more...
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Words That Populate My Mind
This is a collection of words I love, old ones that I love the sound of when I repeat them for years and new ones coined in news articles on up and coming trends and technologies - most of them I k...
aroma, mojo, blithely, fringe, fray, synchronicity, doublespeak, buzzword, thoughtcrime, portmanteau, newspeak, oldspeak and 963 more...
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2008 Wordlist
Hopefully, I'll be using this site for more than one year. It will be fun then to look back and see what new words I found worthy of notice in any given year.
All words spotted in 2008...longanimity, permalancer, breeder, biodegradable, handicapable, gender-neutral, translator, interpreter, translation, interpreting, kleptocracy, fanfiction and 1598 more...
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Valse's Words
fastidious, fervent, bellicose, personification, onomatopoeia, burly, concomitant, tempura, serendipity, pecuniary, foment, chum and 418 more...
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INTERP - VOCABULARY
The vocabulary of conference interpreting. I commend this list to those who want to know more about the profession and to those who wish to organize their knowledge about the profession. To aspirin...
retour language, A-language, B-language, C-language, relay language, take sy on relay, language booth, booth meeting, mic, mike, mission, freelance interpr... and 2086 more...
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Rocketeer's Words
defenestrate, shutterbug, antique, periscope, dogma, peculiar, eccentric, banana, apple, pear, cherry, photograph and 189 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for personification.
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