Personal means belonging to one particular person and private to them. Personal belongings, a personal opinion, personal details on a form.
It also means done by the person themselves rather than by a deputy — a personal visit, personal attention — and that sense is what personally usually carries: I dealt with it personally. The one to watch is taking something personally, which means being hurt by a remark that was not aimed at you. Keep personal apart from personnel, which is the staff of an organisation and is stressed on the last syllable; and note that private is often the better word for information, since personal data has a specific legal meaning under data protection law.
1adjectivepersonalBelonging or relating to one particular person.~96%
“Keep your personal belongings with you at all times.”
synonyms: private, individual
2adjectivedoneDone by the person themselves rather than by somebody else.~2%
“The letter had his personal signature on it.”
3adjectiveaimedAimed at somebody as an individual, usually rudely.~2%
“There is no need to get personal about it.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 17 sentences found in the wild and placed 17 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
personal is a quality of belonging to one person.
Latin personalis comes from persona, which meant a mask worn by an actor, then the character played, then the human being. Every word in this family — person, personality, impersonate — still carries a faint memory of a face that can be put on.
Middle English
personal
English, today
personal
From Middle English personal. From Middle English personal, personele, from Anglo-Norman personel, personal, personell, Old French personal, personel, from Latin persōnālis (“of a person, personly”), equivalent to person + al. a doublet of personnel.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA