Read along with the three podcasts, or open the full dictionary entry for Person for the definition, Arabic meaning, synonyms and example sentences.
Narrator: Today's word is "Person" — noun, pronounced /ˈpɜːsən/, with the stress on "per".
Narrator: A person is a single human being, considered as an individual with their own identity, rights and inner life.
Narrator: In plain English, a person is one human, not a crowd, not a category, just somebody.
Narrator: It comes from the Latin persona, originally meaning a theatrical mask, and later the role or character a human being presents to the world.
Narrator: A common collocation is "in person", which describes meeting someone physically rather than by telephone or video call.
Narrator: It differs from individual, which sounds statistical and administrative, while person carries warmth and ordinary humanity.
Narrator: In grammar, person names the first, second and third person, the system that separates I, you and she or he.
Narrator: Law, medicine, human resources, philosophy and software design all rely on the word when they define who is being served or protected.
Narrator: So remember: a person is one human being, whole and particular, and the mask of Latin has become the face of everyday English.
Speaker A: Why does such an everyday word as person have such a theatrical past?
Speaker B: Because PERSON began life on the Roman stage, from the Latin persona, the mask an actor wore, and the meaning slid gently from the mask to the role to the human wearing it.
Speaker A: So the mask eventually became the human being underneath it?
Speaker B: Exactly that, and it still shows in words like personality and personal, which all circle the idea of a self presented to others.
Speaker A: Example sentences?
Speaker B: "She is the kindest person I know," praising one individual. "Please collect the parcel in person," meaning go yourself rather than sending someone. "Every person on the list was contacted," treating each human separately rather than as a total.
Speaker A: Common mistakes?
Speaker B: The usual plural is people, not persons, and persons should be kept for legal or official notices only. Also remember there is no letter a in the spelling, and never write per son as two words.
Speaker A: Close relatives?
Speaker B: Individual is the formal cousin, human being is the plain-speaking twin, and soul is the poetic alternative, though person keeps its warm, everyday charm!
Speaker B: Let's use "person" in AI prompts — useful for building user profile pages and for writing inclusive interface copy.
Speaker A: How does it apply to a profile feature?
Speaker B: Ask the model to design the data shape around one human being.
Prompt: Design a Person schema in TypeScript with fields for display name, pronouns, contact details and time zone, and explain why each field is optional or required.
Speaker A: What about interface wording?
Speaker B: Use it to keep the copy human and respectful.
Prompt: Rewrite these five onboarding messages so they address the reader as a person rather than as a user or an account holder.
Speaker A: Could it help with data protection work?
Speaker B: Yes, because privacy law is written around identifiable people.
Prompt: Audit this database table and list every column that could identify a living person, then suggest a redaction strategy for each one.
Speaker A: One more?
Speaker B: Let's finish with test data that feels believable.
Prompt: Generate twenty realistic but fictional person records for testing, each with a full name, age, city and short biography, and avoid reusing any real individual's details.
Person — meaning in Arabic & definition More P courses GL Dictionary