- 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
To say the sun is smiling is personification.
Personification is giving human characteristics to non-living things or ideas.
An author describing the sun smiling on a field of flowers is an example of personification.
YourDictionary definition and usage example. Copyright © 2018 by LoveToKnow Corp
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"personification." YourDictionary, n.d. Web. 25 March 2019. <https://www.yourdictionary.com/Personification>.
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personification. (n.d.). Retrieved March 25th, 2019, from https://www.yourdictionary.com/Personification
personification
Webster's New World College Dictionary, Fifth Edition Copyright © 2014 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
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"personification." YourDictionary, n.d. Web. 25 March 2019. <https://www.yourdictionary.com/Personification>.
APA Style
personification. (n.d.). Retrieved March 25th, 2019, from https://www.yourdictionary.com/Personification
personification
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.
THE AMERICAN HERITAGE® DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE, FIFTH EDITION by the Editors of the American Heritage Dictionaries. Copyright © 2016, 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
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MLA Style
"personification." YourDictionary, n.d. Web. 25 March 2019. <https://www.yourdictionary.com/Personification>.
APA Style
personification. (n.d.). Retrieved March 25th, 2019, from https://www.yourdictionary.com/Personification
Noun
(plural personifications)
- A person, thing or name typifying a certain quality or idea; an embodiment or exemplification.
- Adolf Hitler was the personification of anti-Semitism.
- A figure of speech, prosopopoeia, in which an inanimate object or an abstraction is given human qualities.
- The writer used personification to convey her ideas.
- An artistic representation of an abstract quality as a human
- The Grim Reaper is a personification of death.
Origin
Personify +"Ž -ication.
English Wiktionary. Available under CC-BY-SA license.
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Cite this page
MLA Style
"personification." YourDictionary, n.d. Web. 25 March 2019. <https://www.yourdictionary.com/Personification>.
APA Style
personification. (n.d.). Retrieved March 25th, 2019, from https://www.yourdictionary.com/Personification
Sentence Examples
- He was the personification of evil.
- Her bright and airy living room decor is the personification of spring.
- It was the personification of an abstract idea.
- Hadrian had spent much of his reign touring the Roman world, and some of these showed the personifications of provinces greeting him.
- She is the personification of the earth suffering from drought, on which the fertilizing rain descends from heaven.
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WORDS NEAR personification IN THE DICTIONARY
- personification
- personid
- personids
- personifacation