Skip to content
ARCHIEENGLISH
LearnPlayWordsRanking
  • Learn
  • Play
  • Words
  • Ranking
  • Mine
← Vocabulary

first person

nounB2technical · an editor’s judgementNot compared — the two pools are counted one word at a time, so a phrase has no score

First person is the form of a verb or pronoun used for the speaker. I and we, and the verbs that go with them.

Grammar counts three persons, so first is the speaker, second is the person addressed, and third is everybody else. Writing uses the term constantly, since a novel in the first person is told by a character using I, which changes everything about what the reader can know. First-person accounts in journalism are eyewitness ones. Games have the first-person shooter, named for the viewpoint.

Definitions of first person

  1. 1nounfirst personThe grammatical form used by a speaker referring to themselves.B2

    “The whole novel is written in the first person.”

Where it comes from

  1. Ancient Greek

    πρῶτον πρόσωπον

  2. Latin

    prīma persōna

  3. English, today

    first person

Latin prīma persōna, itself a calque of Ancient Greek πρῶτον πρόσωπον. Displaced native Old English forma had, literally, "form hade".

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word