dispersonify

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English

Etymology

From dis- +‎ personify.

Verb

dispersonify (third-person singular simple present dispersonifies, present participle dispersonifying, simple past and past participle dispersonified)

  1. To view as impersonal; to see as an object rather than as having personal attributes.
    • 1864, The Spectator - Volume 37, page 1363:
      It is almost impossible for the most prosaic mind to dispersonify a ship. It requires a greater effort probably on the part of the Englishman to view a ship as an inanimate object than for the ancient Greek to dispersonify the sun or moon.
    • 1899, Friedrich Max Müller, Collected Works, page 407:
      When even a stone was a cutter, a tooth a grinder, a gimlet a borer, the difficulty was not how to personify, but how to dispersonify.
    • 1981, Harvard English Studies - Volume 9, page 35:
      Along these lines we can approach a pure allegorical reading — pure in being univocal, not hybridized. In this reading predicates are construed so as radically to dispersonify their meanings.
    • 2016, Heather Keenleyside, Animals and Other People:
      With these shifts in point of view, Thomson makes body parts not only the objects or the means but also the subjects of personification, granting the eyes and ears of a bee or a hare the power to dispersonify humans.