first person

American  

[furst pur-suhn] / ˈfɜrst ˈpɜr sən /

noun

1. the grammatical person used by a speaker in statements referring to the speaker's own self first person singular or to a group including the speaker first person plural.

2. a pronoun or verb form in the first person, as I or am in English, or a set of such forms.

3. a literary style in which the narrative is told from the perspective of a narrator speaking directly.

   The story is written in the first person.

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first person British  

noun

1. a grammatical category of pronouns and verbs used by the speaker to refer to or talk about himself or herself, either alone ( first person singular ) or together with others ( first person plural )

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Etymology

Origin of first person

First recorded in 1935–40

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

first person

“I’ve seen patients who’ve had this for 50 years, and I was the first person to diagnose.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 15, 2026

The first person that you call, if it’s not your mom or another maternal figure in your life, is your friends.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 13, 2026

Long Islander Michael Larkin discovered this when he became the first person to be diagnosed with Bourbon disease in the New York area.

From Slate ● Aug. 6, 2026

Purja, 43, had written on X this week that he was close to becoming the first person to climb all 14 "super peaks" twice without oxygen.

From Barron's ● Aug. 1, 2026

The first person to be known as an ethologist was an Austrian, Konrad Lorenz.

From "My Life with the Chimpanzees" by Jane Goodall