IMPERSONAL

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does impersonal mean? 

• IMPERSONAL (adjective)
  The adjective IMPERSONAL has 2 senses:

1. not relating to or responsive to individual persons

2. having no personal preference

  Familiarity information: IMPERSONAL used as an adjective is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• IMPERSONAL (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Not relating to or responsive to individual persons

Context example:

an impersonal remark

Similar:

nonpersonal (lacking personality)

Antonym:

personal (concerning or affecting a particular person or his or her private life and personality)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Having no personal preference

Synonyms:

impersonal; neutral

Context example:

a neutral observer

Similar:

nonsubjective; objective (undistorted by emotion or personal bias; based on observable phenomena)

 Context examples 

"Don't use 'you' when you are impersonal. 'You' is very personal, and your use of it just now was not precisely what you meant."

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

If I claim full justice for my art, it is because it is an impersonal thing—a thing beyond myself.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

As a matter of fact he had no such facilities—he had no comfortable family standing behind him and he was liable at the whim of an impersonal government to be blown anywhere about the world.

(The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)

Sometimes she and Miss Baker talked at once, unobtrusively and with a bantering inconsequence that was never quite chatter, that was as cool as their white dresses and their impersonal eyes in the absence of all desire.

(The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)