personne

See also: pèrsonne and persónn-e

French

Etymology

From Middle French personne, from Old French persone, presonne, from Latin persona, of Etruscan origin.

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /pɛʁ.sɔn/
  • (file)
  • Homophone: personnes
  • Rhymes: -ɔn

Noun

personne f (plural personnes)

  1. person
    • 1913, Marcel Proust, Du côté de chez Swann:
      Mais les noms présentent des personnes — et des villes qu’ils nous habituent à croire individuelles, uniques comme des personnes — une image confuse qui tire d’eux, de leur sonorité éclatante ou sombre, la couleur dont elle est peinte uniformément comme une de ces affiches, entièrement bleues ou entièrement rouges, dans lesquelles, à cause des limites du procédé employé ou par un caprice du décorateur, sont bleus ou rouges, non seulement le ciel et la mer, mais les barques, l’église, les passants.
      But names present to us—of persons and of towns which they accustom us to regard as individual, as unique, like persons —a confused picture, which draws from the names, from the brightness or darkness of their sound, the colour in which it is uniformly painted, like one of those posters, entirely blue or entirely red, in which, on account of the limitations imposed by the process used in their reproduction, or by a whim on the designer's part, are blue or red not only the sky and the sea, but the ships and the church and the people in the streets.

Pronoun

personne

  1. (with ne) no one, nobody
    Il n'y a personne ici.
    There is nobody here.
    Qui l'a lu? Personne.
    Who has read it? No one.
  2. anyone

Synonyms

Further reading

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