PERSON, n. per'sn. [L. persona; said to be compounded of per, through or by, and sonus, sound; a Latin word signifying primarily a mask used by actors on the state.]

1. An individual human being consisting of body and soul. We apply the word to living beings only, possessed of a rational nature; the body when dead is not called a person. It is applied alike to a man, woman or child. A person is a thinking intelligent being. – Locke.
2. A man, woman or child, considered as opposed to things, or distinct from them. A zeal for persons is far more easy to be perverted, than a zeal for things. – Sprat.
3. A human being, considered with respect to the living body or corporeal existence only. The form of her person is elegant. You'll find her person difficult to gain. – Dryden. The rebels maintained the fight for a small time, and for their persons showed no want of courage. – Bacon.
4. A human being, indefinitely; one; a man. Let a person's attainments be never so great, he should remember he is frail and imperfect.
5. A human being represented in dialogue, fiction, or on the stage; character. A player appears in the person of king Lear. These tables, Cicero pronounced under the person of Crassus, were of more use and authority than all the books of the philosophers. – Baker.
6. Character of office. How different is the same man from himself, as he sustains the person of a magistrate and that of a friend. – South.
7. In grammar, the nominative to a verb; the agent that performs or the patient that suffers any thing affirmed by a verb; as, I write; he is smitten; she is beloved; the rain descends in torrents. I, thou or you, he, she or it, are called the first, second and third persons. Hence we apply the word person to the termination or modified form of the verb used in connection with the persons; as, the first or third person of the verb; the verb is in the second person.
8. In law, an artificial person, is a corporation or body politic. – Blackstone. In person, by one's self; with bodily presence; not by representative. The king in person visits all around. – Dryden.

To represent as a person; to make to resemble; to image. [Not in use.] – Milton.

1. A character or part, as in a play; a specific kind or manifestation of individual character, whether in real life, or in literary or dramatic representation; an assumed character.
   
   
   [Archaic]

   His first appearance upon the stage in his new person of a sycophant or juggler. Bacon.

   No man can long put on a person and act a part. Jer. Taylor.

   To bear rule, which was thy part
   And person, hadst thou known thyself aright. Milton.

   How different is the same man from himself, as he sustains the person of a magistrate and that of a friend! South.

2. To represent as a person; to personify; to impersonate.
   
   
   [Obs.] Milton.
3. The bodily form of a human being; body; outward appearance; as, of comely person.
   
   

   A fair persone, and strong, and young of age. Chaucer.

   If it assume my noble father's person. Shak.

   Love, sweetness, goodness, in her person shined. Milton.

4. A living, self-conscious being, as distinct from an animal or a thing; a moral agent; a human being; a man, woman, or child.
   
   

   Consider what person stands for; which, I think, is a thinking, intelligent being, that has reason and reflection. Locke.

5. A human being spoken of indefinitely; one; a man; as, any person present.
6. A parson; the parish priest.
   
   
   [Obs.] Chaucer.
7. Among Trinitarians, one of the three subdivisions of the Godhead (the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost); an hypostasis.
   
   
   "Three persons and one God." Bk. of Com. Prayer.
8. One of three relations or conditions (that of speaking, that of being spoken to, and that of being spoken of) pertaining to a noun or a pronoun, and thence also to the verb of which it may be the subject.
   
   

   * A noun or pronoun, when representing the speaker, is said to be in the first person; when representing what is spoken to, in the second person; when representing what is spoken of, in the third person.

9. A shoot or bud of a plant; a polyp or zooid of the compound Hydrozoa Anthozoa, etc.; also, an individual, in the narrowest sense, among the higher animals.
   
   
   Haeckel.

   True corms, composed of united personæ . . . usually arise by gemmation, . . . yet in sponges and corals occasionally by fusion of several originally distinct persons. Encyc. Brit.

   Artificial, or Fictitious, person (Law), a corporation or body politic. blackstone. -- Natural person (Law), a man, woman, or child, in distinction from a corporation. -- In person, by one's self; with bodily presence; not by representative. "The king himself in person is set forth." Shak. -- In the person of, in the place of; acting for. Shak.