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person

/ˈpərsn/

/ˈpəsən/

Other forms: persons

A human being is called a person, and while this applies to an actual individual, it also, in grammar, means the type of person — first person being "I/me," second person being "you," and third person being "he/him," "she/her," or "they/them."

The Latin persōna referred to an actor's mask that created the character being played. This later came to mean "human being," a meaning it still conveys. You can also use it to refer to a person's physical body. I wouldn't recommend crossing the border with any illegal items on your person. Nowadays, the word person replaces "man" to avoid sexism in words such as "congressperson."

Definitions of person
  1. noun
    a human being
    “there was too much for one person to do”
    synonyms: individual, mortal, somebody, someone, soul
    see moresee less
    type of:
    being, organism
    a living thing that has (or can develop) the ability to act or function independently
    causal agency, causal agent, cause
    any entity that produces an effect or is responsible for events or results
  2. noun
    a human body (usually including the clothing)
    “a weapon was hidden on his person
    see moresee less
    type of:
    anatomy, bod, build, chassis, figure, flesh, form, frame, human body, material body, physical body, physique, shape, soma
    alternate name for the body of a human being
  3. noun
    a grammatical category used in the classification of pronouns, possessive determiners, and verb forms according to whether they indicate the speaker, the addressee, or a third party
    “stop talking about yourself in the third person
    see moresee less
    types:
    first person
    pronouns and verbs used to refer to the speaker or writer of the language in which they occur
    second person
    pronouns and verbs used to refer to the person addressed by the language in which they occur
    third person
    pronouns and verbs that are used to refer to something other than the speaker or addressee of the language in which they occur
    type of:
    grammatical category, syntactic category
    (grammar) a category of words having the same grammatical properties
Pronunciation
US

/ˈpərsn/

UK

/ˈpəsən/

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