personified

[ per-son-uh-fahyd ]

adjective

1. (of an inanimate object or abstraction) spoken or written of as having the nature or character of a person:

   Ancient Greek philosophers referred to personified Wisdom as the logos.

2. (of a thing or abstraction) represented visually in the form of a person:

   In this video game, Mario teams up with a personified cloud and a doll from another universe.

3. embodied or incarnated in a real person or concrete thing:

   I honestly admire that musician—to me, he is personified coolness!

verb

1. the simple past tense and past participle of personify ( def ).

Other Words From

• un·per·son·i·fied adjective

Word History and Origins

Origin of personified¹

personify ( def ) + -ed ²( def )

Example Sentences

Jemisin’s urban fantasy — the first of a trilogy — transports readers to a New York City that has come alive, personified in a human avatar.

From Washington Post

The show may go on, but it’s hard to imagine anyone personifying its ideals as well as Alex Trebek did.

From FiveThirtyEight

She is against the patriarchy, especially when personified in villainous ogres like the Duke of Deception.

From The Daily Beast

Fast food and personified death: not exactly Hallmark material.

From The Daily Beast

New York cannot be personified; it is not an autonomous entity.

From The Daily Beast

Pennsylvania is purple personified, and Republican Gov. Tom Corbett is collapsing in the Keystone State.

From The Daily Beast

Which brings us to the elephant in the room—the rapacious advance of online bookselling, personified by Amazon.

From The Daily Beast

On this occasion, personified by her railway companies, she neglected neither, and in the latter surpassed herself.

From Project Gutenberg

The poet is really thinking of his mistress rather than his personified Pity.

From Project Gutenberg

It is easy to understand why the Scotchman, still more than the Englishman, is common sense personified.

From Project Gutenberg

The new moral age would have no traffic with those artists in whom the last smile of the eighteenth century was personified.

From Project Gutenberg

In his dream, he had personified the robot-confessor into the figure of a human judge.

From Project Gutenberg

Related Words

• characterized
• defined
• described
• expressed
• pictured