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

Pike is the first person to survive after being injected with lethal doses of execution drugs, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 3, 2026

She is the first person ever to survive after being given lethal injection drugs.

From Slate ● Oct. 1, 2026

The competition offered a $700,000 Grand Prize to the first person who could decipher four passages containing at least 140 characters each from two Herculaneum scrolls imaged with X-ray CT.

From Science Daily ● Sep. 26, 2026

Welsh actor Matthew Rhys described the "surreal and incredible feeling" after making history on Monday by becoming the first person to win two lead acting prizes in one night.

From BBC ● Sep. 15, 2026

Wittgenstein was surely doing both, and he deliberately moves back and forth between the first person singular and the first person plural to convey both views.

From "The Invention of Science" by David Wootton