person
person Lexical Profile
person Game Scores & Validity
• noun
A human being regarded as an individual with distinct identity, consciousness, and character.
"She is a remarkably generous person who always volunteers at the community center."
An individual's physical body, outer appearance, or immediate bodily presence, especially as carrying possessions.
"The traveler kept his passport and emergency funds safely concealed on his person at all times."
In law, a human being, corporation, partnership, or other entity recognized by law as having rights and duties.
"Under corporate law, a registered company is treated as a legal person capable of entering into contracts."
In grammar, a category used in the classification of pronouns, possessive determiners, and verb forms according to whether they indicate the speaker (first person), the addressee (second person), or a third party (third person).
"The novelist chose to write the entire memoir in the first person to create a sense of intimacy."
Word Nuance & Usage
In everyday English, 'people' is the standard plural of 'person', while the regular plural 'persons' is restricted primarily to formal, legal, or official contexts (e.g., 'missing persons' or occupancy notices).
• Rhymes for person
• Nearby Words
Word Origin & Etymology
Borrowed in the 13th century via Old French 'persone' from Latin 'persona', which originally meant an actor's theatrical mask and later came to denote a character in a play or an individual with legal rights.