unpersonn.
/ˈʌnpəːsn/, U.S. /ˈənˌpərs(ə)n/ A person who, usually for a political misdemeanour, is deemed not to have existed and whose name is removed from all public records. Later also more generally: a person whose contributions or achievements are officially denied or disregarded; a person of no political or social importance.
ΘΚΠ
the mind > attention and judgement > contempt > obscurity or ingloriousness > [noun] > person
Cinderella1840
unperson1949
society > society and the community > social relations > lack of social communication or relations > exclusion from society > [noun] > one whose existence is denied
unperson1949
society > society and the community > social relations > lack of social communication or relations > exclusion from society > [noun] > one whose existence is denied > for political misdemeanour
unperson1949
the mind > attention and judgement > importance > unimportance > [noun] > one who is unimportant > types of > other
unperson1981
1949 ‘G. Orwell’ Nineteen Eighty-four ii. 159 Syme was not only dead, he was abolished, an unperson.
1954 Economist 18 Sept. 883/2 Beria is already an ‘unperson’, the record of his career ‘unfacts’.
1961 Guardian 28 Apr. 8/5 The concentration camp was a factory for processing people into un-persons.
1969 H. E. Salisbury Siege of Leningrad i. iii. 24 Berezhkov omits any mention of Dekanozov's name or of the Dekanozov-Weizsäcker meeting. Because of his execution in 1953 Dekanozov apparently has become an unperson.
1981 P. Dickinson Seventh Raven xi. 151 You've got absolutely nothing to do..in hospitals... Places like that tend to turn you into a kind of unperson.
1983 Listener 16 June 4/1 He omitted the then Foreign Secretary, Francis Pym, who seemed even then to have become an unperson.
2007 I. McDonald Brasyl 173 Edson is an unperson now. There is no place for him in Cidade de Luz.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, December 2014; most recently modified version published online December 2021).
unpersonv.
/(ˌ)ʌnˈpəːsn/, U.S. /ˌənˈpərsən/ΚΠ
1646 N. Homes Vindic. baptizing Beleevers Infants 72 Let them therefore look to this, that mash the Text, and unpronounce, unperson, and unnumber the words, and dispoint the sentences.
2. transitive. To remove the qualities of personhood from; to depersonalize.
ΚΠ
1837 Maine Monthly Mag. 551 551 To unperson God and make him a diffused energy..is a thing abhorrent to every right sentiment of Him.
1968 San Antonio Light 28 July 10 d/5 No alcoholic is so diseased that he is unpersoned.
1973 Listener 4 Jan. 8/2 On television... The addition of a face..turns the newsreader into a person, but the job then requires him to unperson himself.
2010 C. McWilliam What to Look for in Winter i. 276 One of the reasons, I am sure, that I have been so unpersoned by my blindness is that I was my eyes, my eyes were how I got to being me.
3. transitive. To make into an unperson. Usually in passive.
ΘΚΠ
the mind > attention and judgement > contempt > obscurity or ingloriousness > cast into obscurity [verb (transitive)]
obscure1548
eclipse1581
disgrace1589
darken1609
overshadow1642
unperson1966
1966 M. Page & D. Burg in Soviet Stud. 18 96 (title) Unpersoned: the fall of Nikita Sergeyevitch Khrushchev.
1977 Listener 16 June 790/2 One of them dead and the other efficiently unpersoned and confined to a political asylum.
1983 Daily Tel. 12 Mar. 14/2 In 1956, Bob..brought in Hamilton..as editorial director... But in the new edition it looks as if all the work was done by his successor, Harold Harris. ‘It is no trivial matter to be “unpersonned”,’ says Hamilton.
1989 M. Amis London Fields xx. 406 He's gone—he was never here. He's been unpersoned. He isn't even history.
2000 C. Hitchens Unacknowledged Legislation 119 He had been briefly unpersoned by Stalin's purge.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, December 2014; most recently modified version published online December 2021).
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n.1949v.1646