Personified

Personification is a figure of speech in which human qualities—such as emotions, intentions, or actions—are attributed to non-human entities, or to abstract ideas. It is a form of metaphor that brings ideas to life by imagining them with human characteristics. Anthropomorphism, by contrast, extends human form and behavior to animals, gods, or objects, often to create characters in storytelling rather than just to describe a trait.

It is widely used in literature, poetry, folklore, and rhetoric to animate nature, time, or concepts such as fate and justice. Common devices include describing winds as speaking, seasons as acting, or Death as a person who can be seen or spoken to. Through personification, writers can make abstract or distant phenomena more relatable to readers.

Notable examples include lines such as “Time marches on” or “The sun smiled down on the village.” The device can convey mood, add emphasis, or clarify a theme by making abstract ideas tangible. In rhetorical analysis, personification often serves to humanize a concept, thereby enhancing resonance and memory.

The term personified is the past participle of personify and is used to describe something that has been endowed with human characteristics, as in “the personified Time” or “the personified Death.” Related terms include prosopopoeia, a broader figure of speech in which a non-human or absent entity is given voice.