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dramatis personae

dramatis personae noun: the characters in a play, story, or history; a list of them, usually arranged in order of first appearance, as protatic matter.

Noun

dramatis personae pl (normally plural, singular dramatis persona)

  1. (plural, plural-normally) The characters in a play, story, or history; a list of them, usually arranged in order of first appearance, as protatic matter.
    • (The Devil enters like a sapphire wasp
      That flickers mica wings. He lifts a hand
      To brush away a disrespectful smile.
      Job’s wife sits up.)
      Job’s Wife ➢ Well, if we aren’t all here.
      Including me, the only Dramatis
      Personae needed to enact the problem.1945, Robert Frost, A Masque of Reason
    • Edward Winslow, in Plymouth, made a revealing statement when he wrote, “We came here to avoid the hierarchy, the holy days, the Book of Common Prayer, etc.” […] There were, depending on the local area, many types of hierarchies in England […] If all this social structure was to be “avoided,” what...1963, Sumner Chilton Powell, “Introduction”, in Puritan Village: The Formation of a New England Town, Wesleyan University Press

dramatis personae meaning in Tamil

dramatis personae in Tamil

நாடக பாத்திரங்கள்

Examples of dramatis personae in a sentence

  • Furthermore, he should not attempt to crowd his stage too much, lest the dramatis personae overwhelm his audience.1963, Sumner Chilton Powell, “Introduction”, in Puritan Village: The Formation of a New England Town, Wesleyan University Press:
  • Instead of a dramatis personae of species, The Dinosaurs uses its beasts to illustrate climate, daily life, movement, danger, even extinction.1981 December 15, Don Lessem, “Paperbacks ’81: Novelty items with soft covers”, in Richard M. Gaines, editor, The Boston Phoenix, volume X...
  • Marx created a narrative populated by workers, capitalists, officials and scientists who were history’s dramatis personae.2015 February 18, Yanis Varoufakis, “Yanis Varoufakis: How I became an erratic Marxist”, in The Guardian, →ISSN, archived from the original...

Forms of dramatis personae

singulardramatis persona
alternative form (archaic)dramatis personæ

Origin of dramatis personae

Borrowed from Latin dramatis personae (literally “characters of the play”).

Questions about dramatis personae

What does dramatis personae mean?
Dramatis personae means the characters in a play, story, or history; a list of them, usually arranged in order of first appearance, as protatic matter.
What is dramatis personae in Tamil?
Dramatis personae in Tamil is நாடக பாத்திரங்கள். See Dramatis personae meaning in Tamil.
How do you use dramatis personae in a sentence?
Furthermore, he should not attempt to crowd his stage too much, lest the dramatis personae overwhelm his audience.
What part of speech is dramatis personae?
Dramatis personae is a noun.

Words near dramatis personae in the dictionary

  1. dramaticomusical
  2. dramatics
  3. dramaticule
  4. dramaticules
  5. dramatis persona
  6. dramatis personae
  7. dramatis personæ
  8. dramatisable
  9. dramatisation
  10. dramatisations
  11. dramatise

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dramatis personae (page history and authors); dramatis personae (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “dramatis personae.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dramatis_personae. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.