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Definition of personification - 4 dictionary results
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per⋅son⋅i⋅fi⋅ca⋅tion

  [per-son-uh-fi-key-shuhn]
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–noun
1. the attribution of a personal nature or character to inanimate objects or abstract notions, esp. as a rhetorical figure.
2. the representation of a thing or abstraction in the form of a person, as in art.
3. the person or thing embodying a quality or the like; an embodiment or incarnation: He is the personification of tact.
4. an imaginary person or creature conceived or figured to represent a thing or abstraction.
5. the act of personifying.
6. a character portrayal or representation in a dramatic or literary work.
Origin:
1745–55; personi(fy) + -fication

Related forms:
per⋅son⋅i⋅fi⋅ca⋅tor, noun
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.
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per·son·i·fi·ca·tion   (pər-sŏn'ə-fĭ-kā'shən)   
n.  
  1. The act of personifying.
  2. A person or thing typifying a certain quality or idea; an embodiment or exemplification: "He's invisible, a walking personification of the Negative" (Ralph Ellison).
  3. A figure of speech in which inanimate objects or abstractions are endowed with human qualities or are represented as possessing human form, as in Hunger sat shivering on the road or Flowers danced about the lawn. Also called prosopopeia.
  4. Artistic representation of an abstract quality or idea as a person.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
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Personification

Per*son`i*fi*ca"tion\, n. [Cf. F. personnification.]

1. The act of personifying; impersonation; embodiment. --C. Knight.

2. (Rhet.) A figure of speech in which an inanimate object or abstract idea is represented as animated, or endowed with personality; prosopop?ia; as, the floods clap their hands. "Confusion heards his voice." --Milton.
Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc.
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personification

figure of speech in which human characteristics are attributed to an abstract quality, animal, or inanimate object. An example is "The Moon doth with delight / Look round her when the heavens are bare" (William Wordsworth, "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood," 1807). Another is "Death lays his icy hand on kings" (James Shirley, "The Glories of Our Blood and State," 1659). Personification has been used in European poetry since Homer and is particularly common in allegory; for example, the medieval morality play Everyman (c. 1500) and the Christian prose allegory Pilgrim's Progress (1678) by John Bunyan contain characters such as Death, Fellowship, Knowledge, Giant Despair, Sloth, Hypocrisy, and Piety. Personification became almost an automatic mannerism in 18th-century Neoclassical poetry, as exemplified by these lines from Thomas Gray's "An Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard": Here rests his head upon the lap of earthA youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown:Fair science frowned not on his humble birth,And Melancholy marked him for her own.

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Encyclopedia Britannica, 2008. Encyclopedia Britannica Online.
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