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Definition of "personality" []

  • The quality or condition of being a person. (noun)
  • The totality of qualities and traits, as of character or behavior, that are peculiar to a specific person. (noun)
  • The pattern of collective character, behavioral, temperamental, emotional, and mental traits of a person: Though their personalities differed, they got along as friends. (noun)
  • Distinctive qualities of a person, especially those distinguishing personal characteristics that make one socially appealing: won the election more on personality than on capability. See Synonyms at disposition. (noun)
  • A person as the embodiment of distinctive traits of mind and behavior. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Use "personality" in a sentence
  • "If instead of the soul's desire being simply the victory of love over malice it were, so to speak, the "material fruit" of such a victory -- namely, the survival of personality after death -- then, in place of the struggle between love and malice, we should be compelled to regard _personality in itself_, apart from the nature of that personality, as the secret of the universe."
  • "According to the revelation of man's complex vision this hyper-physical, hyper-psychic "something," which is the concrete centre of will and consciousness and energy, is also the invisible core or base of what we term personality, and, without its real existence, personality can have no permanence."
  • "This does not rob the term personality of its meaning, for each personality does, in some way, after all, exist for itself."