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Definition of "third person" [third person]

  • The grammatical category of forms that designate a person or thing other than the speaker or the one spoken to. Examples of forms in the third person include English pronouns such as she and they and verb forms such as Spanish hablan "they speak.” (noun)
  • A discourse or literary style in which the narrator recounts his or her own experiences or impressions using such forms: an essay written in the third person. (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 "third person" in a sentence
  • "Five days later, Scharansky was allowed to emigrate to Israel, and it became apparent we might have to relocate a third person that month—Ferdinand Marcos—to avoid, as we had in Haiti, a bloody civil war."
  • "But if the dedicant of the land had himself purchased it from a third person who had sold it because of his poverty, then at the Jubilee it reverted to the latter, and the dedicant had to recompense the sanctuary by paying its redemption price calculated as before (Lev., xxvii, 16-25)."
  • "Another neighbor used dehorners to scoop out the tiny horn buttons, and a third person vaccinated the calf."