| 释义 |
personification|pəˈsɒnɪfɪˈkeɪʃən|
[n. of action f. personify: so in mod.F. (1835 in Dict. Acad.).]
The action of personifying, or something in which such action is embodied.
1. Attribution of personal form, nature, or characteristics; the representation of a thing or abstraction as a person: esp. as a rhetorical figure or species of metaphor. Also in art, the representation of a thing or abstraction by a human figure.
1755Johnson, Personification, prosopopœia; the change of things to persons: as, ‘Confusion heard his voice.’ 1776Mickle tr. Camoens' Lusiad vi. 263 note, Poetry delights in Personification. 1795Burke Regic. Peace iv. Wks. IX. 11 Therefore comes in abstraction and personification..‘Make your peace with France’. 1865Tylor Early Hist. Man. xi. 324 A personification of the phenomena of nature. 1875Jowett Plato (ed. 2) I. p. xiv, The personifications of church and country as females.
b. An imaginary or ideal person conceived as representing a thing or abstraction.
1850McCosh Div. Govt. i. i. (1874) 22 The Stoic divinities are just a personification of the stern method of the Stoic character. 1869H. F. Tozer Highl. Turkey II. 321 Scylla, who is the personification of the whirlpool. 1885Clodd Myths & Dr. i. iii. 44 Among the Aztecs..the bird-serpent, was a personification of the wind.
2. The embodiment of a quality, idea, or other abstraction, in a real person (or, by extension, in a concrete thing); usually applied to the actual person (or thing) as embodying the quality, etc., or exemplifying it in a striking manner or degree; an impersonation, ‘incarnation’ (of something).
1807–8W. Irving Salmag. i. (1860) 20 A fair damsel, who looked for all the world like the personification of a rainbow. 1819Scott Ivanhoe ii, The large-jointed heavy horses,..which, placed by the side of those Eastern coursers, might have passed for a personification of substance and of shadow. 1855Macaulay Hist. Eng. xi. III. 76 He was popularly regarded as the personification of the Latitudinarian spirit.
3. A dramatic representation, or literary description, of a person or character. rare.
1814D'Israeli Quarrels Auth. (1867) 307 He was creating new dramatic existences in the exquisite personifications of his comic characters. 1848Thackeray Van. Fair liii, The beautiful and accomplished Mrs. Rawdon Crawley's admirable personifications.
So perˈsonifiˌcative a., having the quality of personifying; perˈsonifiˌcator = personifier.
1834Southey Doctor xxxiii. (1862) 79 Michael Drayton,..as determined a personificator as Darwin himself. 1864Press 9 July 669 He is a perfect personificator of the travelling mountebank. 1890Cent. Dict., Personificative. |