person

English dictionary entry

Meanings

noun
  1. An individual who has been granted personhood; usually a human being.
  2. A character or part, as in a play; a specific kind or manifestation of individual character, whether in real life, or in literary or dramatic representation; an assumed character.
  3. Any one of the three hypostases of the Holy Trinity: the Father, Son, or Holy Spirit.
  4. Any sapient or socially intelligent being.
  5. Someone who likes or has an affinity for (a specified thing).
  6. A human of unspecified gender (in terms usually constructed with man or woman).
  7. A worker in a specified function or specialty.
  8. The physical body of a being seen as distinct from the mind, character, etc.
  9. Any individual or formal organization with standing before the courts.
  10. The human genitalia; specifically, the penis.
  11. A linguistic category used to distinguish between the speaker of an utterance and those to whom or about whom they are speaking. See grammatical person.
  12. A shoot or bud of a plant; a polyp or zooid of the compound Hydrozoa, Anthozoa, etc.; also, an individual, in the narrowest sense, among the higher animals.
verb
  1. To represent as a person; to personify; to impersonate.
  2. To man, to supply with staff or crew.
name
  1. A surname.

Pronunciation

/ˈpɜː.sən/ [ˈpʰɜːsn̩] En-uk-person.ogg /ˈpɜɹ.sən/ [ˈpʰɝsn̩] En-us-person.ogg /ˈpɑ.sən/ /ˈpər.sən/ /-zən/ [ˈpɜː-]

Word forms

person people persons personing personning personed personned

Etymology

Etymology tree Latin persōna Anglo-Norman persouneder. Middle English persoun English person From Middle English persoun, personne et al., from Anglo-Norman parsone, persoun et al. (Old French persone (“human being”), French personne), and its source Latin persōna (“mask used by actor; role, part, character”), perhaps a loanword from Etruscan 𐌘𐌄𐌓𐌔𐌖 (φersu, “mask”). In this sense, displaced native man, which came to mean primarily "adult male" in Middle English; see Old English mann. Doublet of parson and persona.

Translations

Acehnese: ureuëng Afrikaans: persoon Ahom: 𑜀𑜤𑜃𑜫 Ainu: アイヌ Aklanon: tawo Alabama: aati Albanian: njeri Southern Altai: кижи Southern Amami Ōshima: むん Amis: tamdaw Chiricahua: ndé Arabic: شَخْص Arabic: مَرْء Arabic: فَرْد Arabic: شخص Arabic: حد Arabic: إِنْسَان Arabic: إنسان Arabic: بنادم Aramaic: ܐܦܐ Aramaic: ܦܪܨܘܦܐ Aramaic: ܩܢܘܡܐ Armenian: անձ Armenian: անձնավորություն Old Armenian: անձն Asturian: persona Avar: гӏадан Azerbaijani: adam Azerbaijani: fərd Azerbaijani: şəxsiyyət Azerbaijani: şəxs Azerbaijani: insan Azerbaijani: bəşər Bala: 纳莫 Bashkir: кеше Bashkir: әҙәм Basque: pertsona Belarusian: чалаве́к Belarusian: асо́ба Bengali: ব্যক্তি Bengali: লোক Central Bikol: tawo Rinconada Bikol: tawō Eastern Bontoc: tako Breton: den Bulgarian: чове́к Bulgarian: персо́на Bulgarian: ли́чност Burmese: လူ Burmese: ပုဂ္ဂိုလ် Burmese: မနုဿ Butuanon: tao Caijia: u³³tsʰo³³ Carpathian Rusyn: чолові́к Catalan: persona Cebuano: tawo Chagatai: کِیشِی Chamicuro: klistyano Chechen: адам Chichewa: munthu Chickasaw: hattak Khumi Chin: khimi
This entry uses open data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA/GFDL). Word forms are used for search and are not indexed as separate pages.