personification

Personification is giving human characteristics to non-living things or ideas. (noun)

An author describing the sun smiling on a field of flowers is an example of personification.

See personification in Webster's New World College Dictionary

noun

a personifying or being personified
a person or thing thought of as representing some quality, thing, or idea; embodiment; perfect example: he is the personification of honesty
a figure of speech in which a thing, quality, or idea is represented as a person

See personification in American Heritage Dictionary 4

(pər-sŏnˌə-fĭ-kāˈshən)

noun

The act of personifying.
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).
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.
Artistic representation of an abstract quality or idea as a person.

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