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Personify   /pərsˈɑnəfˌaɪ/   Listen
Personify

verb
(past & past part. personified; pres. part. personifying)
1.
Invest with or as with a body; give body to.  Synonym: body.
2.
Represent, as of a character on stage.  Synonyms: be, embody.
3.
Attribute human qualities to something.  Synonym: personate.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Personify" Quotes from Famous Books



... you invite the enlightened nineteenth century to accept the idea of a godhead that is anything else than an abstraction?" continued the weak male voice. "Why, to personify your god is to limit him. How can ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici

... which has hitherto baffled all conjectures, because it seems by its traits, its carriage, its odd splendour, and its inappropriateness, to personify the magic, the romantic feeling, or, if you prefer, the misrepresentation of the picture; I mean that little witch-like personage, child-like and crone-like at the same time, with her hair streaming and adorned with pearls, gliding ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton

... further confusion: Christian philosophers have tried to personify this 'soul of the universe,' for God, they say, thinks and feels and knows. They try to get a personality without form or bounds or dimentions, but it all ends in vagueness and confusion. As for me, and I think I am not so different from ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson

... inclination, it is true, is suppressed by a little reflection, and only takes place in children, poets, and the antient philosophers. It appears in children, by their desire of beating the stones, which hurt them: In poets, by their readiness to personify every thing: And in the antient philosophers, by these fictions of sympathy and antipathy. We must pardon children, because of their age; poets, because they profess to follow implicitly the suggestions of their fancy: But what excuse shall we find to justify our philosophers ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume

... have quoted, and, upon his own theory, at any rate, replied with perfect justice, that they were also kept up by competition. The common language upon the subject is merely one instance of the fallacies into which men fall when they personify an abstraction. Competition becomes a kind of malevolent and supernatural being, to whose powers no conceivable limits are assigned. It is supposed to account for any amount of degradation. Yet if, by multiplying their numbers, workmen increase ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen


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