personhood

/ˈpɝ.sən.hʊd/

personhood noun: the state or period of being a person.

Noun

personhood (countable and uncountable, plural personhoods)

The state or period of being a person.
- [Animals] are conscious; they are subjectively aware; they have interests; they can suffer. No characteristic other than sentience is required for personhood.2008, Gary L. Francione, Animals as Persons
- These examples reveal that the shared personhood of hunters and prey was mutually comprehensible, such that hunters could see the animalness of themselves and the humanness of prey, and prey could see the humanness of themselves […]2014, Christopher Watts, Relational Archaeologies: Humans, Animals, Things, page 101
The status of being considered as a person.
- A majority of the present world's peoples delay the conferral of personhood (to children).

It meant politics, political personhood, republic, sovereignhood and power.
No characteristic other than sentience is required for personhood.
Adapting that takes away individuality, personhood or self-worth is overadapting.

plural	personhoods

From person + -hood.

What does personhood mean?: Personhood means the state or period of being a person.
What is personhood in Tagalog?: Personhood in Tagalog is katauhan. See Personhood meaning in Tagalog.
What part of speech is personhood?: Personhood is a noun.
How do you pronounce personhood?: Personhood is pronounced /ˈpɝ.sən.hʊd/.
What is the plural of personhood?: The plural of personhood is personhoods.

Adapted from Wiktionary: personhood (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.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-personhood.ogg.

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