Morgan Pinder is a writer at GameRant and a graduate researcher at Deakin University in Australia. Their research interests are in video games, environmentalism and gothic media. Morgan’s most recent ...

Understanding the Context

The words person and people are not related etymologically. Person comes from Latin persona, meaning "actor's mask; character in a play; person," while people comes from Latin populus, meaning "the people." A person is an individual human being. At least one person died and several others were injured. Everyone knows he's the only person who can do the job.

Key Insights

My great-grandfather was a person of some importance here. The amount of sleep we need varies from person to person. PERSON definition: a human being, whether an adult or child. See examples of person used in a sentence. The first person ("I" or "we") refers to the person speaking, the second person ("you") refers to the person being spoken to and the third person ("he", "she", "it", or "they") refers to another person or thing being spoken about or described: A human being is called a person, and while this applies to an actual individual, it also, in grammar, means the type of person — first person being "I/me," second person being "you," and third person being "he/him," "she/her," or "they/them." Any of three groups of pronoun forms with corresponding verb inflections that distinguish the speaker (first person), the individual addressed (second person), and the individual or thing spoken of (third person).

Final Thoughts

From Middle Welsh person, ultimately from Latin persōna (“mask used by actor; role, part, character”), probably via Middle English persoun and Old French persone (“human being”).