PERSONA (personae)

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

Irregular inflected form: personae   

 Dictionary entry overview: What does persona mean? 

• PERSONA (noun)
  The noun PERSONA has 2 senses:

1. an actor's portrayal of someone in a play

2. (Jungian psychology) a personal facade that one presents to the world

  Familiarity information: PERSONA used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• PERSONA (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

An actor's portrayal of someone in a play

Classified under:

Nouns denoting cognitive processes and contents

Synonyms:

character; part; persona; role; theatrical role

Context example:

she played the part of Desdemona

Hypernyms ("persona" is a kind of...):

characterization; enactment; personation; portrayal (acting the part of a character on stage; dramatically representing the character by speech and action and gesture)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "persona"):

bit part; minor role (a small role)

heavy (a serious (or tragic) role in a play)

hero (the principal character in a play or movie or novel or poem)

ingenue (the role of an innocent artless young woman in a play)

name part; title role (the role of the character after whom the play is named)

heroine (the main good female character in a work of fiction)

baddie; villain (the principal bad character in a film or work of fiction)

Derivation:

impersonate (represent another person with comic intentions)

impersonate (assume or act the character of)

personify (represent, as of a character on stage)

Sense 2

Meaning:

(Jungian psychology) a personal facade that one presents to the world

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Synonyms:

image; persona

Context example:

a public image is as fragile as Humpty Dumpty

Hypernyms ("persona" is a kind of...):

appearance; visual aspect (outward or visible aspect of a person or thing)

Domain category:

psychological science; psychology (the science of mental life)

Carl Gustav Jung; Carl Jung; Jung (Swiss psychologist (1875-1961))

Derivation:

personify (represent, as of a character on stage)

 Context examples 

Pangloss for himself; and very earnestly, but very unsuccessfully, trying to persuade the others that there were some fine tragic parts in the rest of the dramatis personae.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

Venus will add charm and charisma to your persona, and you will effortlessly draw others to you.

(AstrologyZone.com, by Susan Miller)

Jo accepted it with a smile, for she had never outgrown her liking for lads, and soon found herself involved in the usual labyrinth of love, mystery, and murder, for the story belonged to that class of light literature in which the passions have a holiday, and when the author's invention fails, a grand catastrophe clears the stage of one half the dramatis personae, leaving the other half to exult over their downfall.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)