personification

Definitions  ·  Examples  ·  Pronunciations  ·  Etymologies  ·  Related  ·  Statistics  ·  Comments  · 
“
In fact, all civilized and barbarous peoples in the world have without exception believed, and still believe, in the reality of images seen in dreams, and their personification has been the source of an immense number of myths.

View all »
Definitions (11)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (4)

  1. noun The act of personifying.
  2. noun 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).
  3. noun 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.
1 more from this dictionary »

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (3)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (1)

Toggle WordNet definitions WordNet (3)

Toggle elsewhere links Elsewhere on the web

View all »
Examples (50)

  • The wretch looked like the personification of fear; his knees quaked together, his face was covered with cold perspiration, and his teeth chattered audibly Robeckal had been still half intoxicated when he undertook to carry out Simon's proposition to play the regicide. —  The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II
  • His management of the poetic figure of personification is superb. —  Milton
  • --THOMAS VAUGHAN LONDON GEORGE REDWAY 1896 PREFACE The term Modern Satanism is not intended to signify the development of some new aspect of old doctrine concerning demonology, or some new argument for the personification of the evil principle in universal nature. —  Devil-Worship in France or The Question of Lucifer
  • He seemed like a personification of Satan. —  The Kentucky Ranger
  • He lacks the stimulus, for example, of games in which personification is a direct tutor to selfhood, as I shall remark further on. —  The Story of the Mind
More examples »
 

Tags

Sign up or sign in to add tags.

Stats

This word has been looked up 454 times.

stop updating
On Twitter

Photos from

flickr images

Add a related word »
Related

Roget's II Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

Used in the same context Used in the Same Context

Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (1)

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (1)

  1. = French personnification = Spanish personificacion = Portuguese personificação = Italian personificazione, from New Latin *personificatio(n-), from personificare, personify: see personify.
 

Pronunciations
Record your own »
/pərsɑnɪfɪkeɪʃən/
by American Heritage

Charts
frequency chart

Bubble size: how much this word was used in a year

Bubble height: used more or less than expected, vs. all uses evenly distributed

You can expect to see this word a few times a year.

Recently looked up

wc · effervescent · paper · ebullient · Doubtfire

Recent Favorites

pygopagus · sanglant · Astacus · sweetbread · qualms

Recent Pronunciations

Glockenspiel · Ersatz · Blaukraut bleibt Blaukraut und Brautkleid bleibt Brautkleid · Haifischschwanzflossenfleischsuppe · Der Kottbusser Postkutscher putzt den Kottbusser Postkutschkasten