Word.ws English Dictionary

prosopopoeia

/pɹəˌsəʊpəˈpiːə/

prosopopoeia noun: an act of personifying a person or object when communicating to an audience; a figure of speech involving this.

Noun

prosopopoeia (countable and uncountable, plural prosopopoeias or prosopopoeiae)

  1. (rhetoric) An act of personifying a person or object when communicating to an audience; a figure of speech involving this.
    • Of the prosopopœia or personification, there are two kinds: one when action and character are attributed to fictitious, irrational, or even inanimate objects; the others, when a probable but fictitious speech is assigned to a real character.1819 January, Thomas Hartwell Horne, “An introduction to the Critical Study and Knowledge of the Holy Scriptures”, in The Eclectic Review, page 35
    • Prosopopœia a new person feigns,
      And to inanimates speech and actions deigns.1835, L[arret] Langley, “[Rhetorical Figures.] Prosopopoeia.”, in A Manual of the Figures of Rhetoric, […], Doncaster, South Yorkshire: […] C. White, […], →OCLC, page 23
  2. The personification of an abstraction.

Forms of prosopopoeia

pluralprosopopoeias
pluralprosopopoeiae
alternative formprosopopeia
alternative formprosopopœia

Origin of prosopopoeia

Learned borrowing from Ancient Greek προσωποποιία (prosōpopoiía, “dramatization, the putting of speeches into the mouths of characters”). By surface analysis, prosopo- + -poeia.

Words formed from prosopopoeia

Questions about prosopopoeia

What does prosopopoeia mean?
Prosopopoeia means an act of personifying a person or object when communicating to an audience; a figure of speech involving this.
What part of speech is prosopopoeia?
Prosopopoeia is a noun.
How do you pronounce prosopopoeia?
Prosopopoeia is pronounced /pɹəˌsəʊpəˈpiːə/.
What is the plural of prosopopoeia?
The plural of prosopopoeia is prosopopoeias.

Words near prosopopoeia in the dictionary

  1. prosoponeuralgia
  2. prosoponology
  3. prosopons
  4. prosopopeia
  5. prosopopesis
  6. prosopopoeia
  7. prosopopoeiae
  8. prosopopoeial
  9. prosopopoeias
  10. prosopopoeic
  11. prosopopœia

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: prosopopoeia (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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