person

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   A human being.

   There was too much work for one person to do alone.

2. 2
   noun

   Someone's body, including their clothes.

   The guard found a weapon hidden on his person.

3. 3
   noun

   A grammatical form showing whether a word refers to the speaker, the listener, or someone else.

   Try not to talk about yourself in the third person.

Appears in

Simplified etymology

Person comes from Latin persona, meaning “actor’s mask,” “character in a play,” and also “human being.” In Middle English it could mean either a role or character assumed in life or drama, or an individual human being. The role sense was later largely taken over by persona, borrowed directly from Latin in the mid-18th century.

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.

Topics

External links

• Google Images
• Cambridge Dictionary
• Wiktionary