Talk:person

Plural persons vs people

• I heard on NPR that the "UN day of disabled persons" is coming up. (I'm not sure when it is persons and when people.) RJFJR 15:19, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

persons in place of people

To RJFJR: Teachers have been using "persons" in place of people for the past several years. This personalizes (literally) the word people and avoids the un-PC stigma of appearing ethnocentric. It also creates a sometimes redundant and confusing vocabulary especially for students. These terms and many others are becoming more common among educators of non-English speakers, of ELL students (English Language Learners, a supposed refining of the term ESL - English as a Second Language), and of special education students. What the technical term is for this refining/obfuscating/slanging, I don't know, but surely there is one. Academics, politicians, propagandists, advertisers, and wanna-be intellectuals have been doing it for centuries, at least. As uncomfortable as it makes me when I submit and succumb, undeniably the habit is essential to augmenting and refining a language. "Wayne Roberson, Austin, Texas" 3-13-08 3:19pm CST. — This unsigned comment was added by Wayne Roberson, Austin, Texas (talk • contribs) at 21:31, 13 March 2008 (UTC).

Usage notes on plural

Please take a look at the usage notes for my effort to explain. It is possible it should be longer. I hadn't thought about this before, so I might have blundered. DCDuring TALK 10:12, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Related or derived?

Are cat person and dog person related terms or derived terms? --Tyranny Sue 13:40, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

Derived. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 14:55, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

Masculine or neutral gender?

'The person eats his cake' or 'The person eats its cake'?

Or would it even be correct to say 'The person eats her cake' if the person is female?

— This unsigned comment was added by 125.88.20.178 (talk) at 11 January 2010 (UTC).

His cake. If you know that the person is female, you would not say person...you would say woman, girl, lady, or she. When you say person, it usually means that you don’t know (or don’t care) whether the sex is male or female. —Stephen 11:10, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Persons are legal fictions, they can't eat cake. A human who is pretending to be a person can eat cake though. Also, persons do not have genders, they have 'a sex' (or nothing in the case of corporations). — This unsigned comment was added by 216.81.22.36 (talk) at 18:05, 11 October 2011 (UTC).

Nonsense. Person is far more than a legal concept. Its main meaning is "(human) individual".

To answer the original question: this is a prime case for singular they if the gender of the person is unknown or irrelevant (as implied by the use of person in the first place). The person eats their cake. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 00:23, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

RFV

The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for verification.

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

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Rfv-sense "a penis". The reference supplied glosses "expose his person" as "legalese for penis", but "person" in that phrase is really just sense 2, "body". - -sche (discuss) 17:54, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

There is this; on the other hand, see this... I'm not convinced it is anything other than a vague euphemism (certainly the next page of the Powell quotation makes clear that "her person" is not "her penis"). - -sche (discuss) 17:59, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

RFV-failed, because there were only two citations. Even if a third like them can be found, I will challenge on RFD whether they support the sense in question as a sense distinct from the general sense. - -sche (discuss) 06:59, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

This sense was later re-added. - -sche (discuss) 23:31, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

I redeleted it, but now I've got doubts. At some point the following citation was part of the article:

• 1972, Evans v. Ewels, Weekly Law Reports, vol. 1, p. 671 at pp. 674–675:

  It seems to me that at any rate today, and indeed by 1824, the word "person" in connection with sexual matters had acquired a meaning of its own; a meaning which made it a synonym for "penis." It may be ... that it was the forerunner of Victorian gentility which prevented people calling a penis a penis. But however that may be I am satisfied in my own mind that it has now acquired an established meaning to the effect already stated. It is I venture to say, well known amongst those who practise in the courts that the word "person" is so used over and over again. It is the familiar synonym of that part of the body, and, as one of the reasons for my decision in this case, I would use that interpretation of what was prevailing in 1824 and what has become established in the 150 years since then.

Maybe it's more than just "penis" (like "sex", which can refer to both male and female privy parts), but it seems to be a thing. 89.64.70.36 22:17, 24 October 2022 (UTC)

human's appearance (formal)  ; character or role (archaic)

1. an individual human being's general appearance (formal) 
2. a character or role, e.g. in a play (archaic) 

--Backinstadiums (talk) 11:10, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

Used as plural of person vs plural of person

What difference is being highlighted by having two separete sections in people: Used as plural of person and plural of person  ? --Backinstadiums (talk) 16:39, 26 June 2021 (UTC)