Dictionary

nonperson en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• /ˈnɒnpɜː(ɹ)sən/

Etymology

Etymology tree English non- Latin persōna Anglo-Norman persouneder. Middle English persoun English person English nonperson From non- + person.

Meanings

1. Not a real person; a subhuman.
   • As all lives must end, do you prefer to die as a nonperson, forgotten in a nursing home and totally stripped of dignity and independence? 1989, Michael C. Kearl, Endings: A Sociology of Death and Dying, page 146:
   • Arguably, what is so hateful about a hate crime is that it is an attempt by some individual or group to treat a Person as a Nonperson. 1994, Lisa J. McIntyre, Law in the Sociological Enterprise, page 92:
   • How does hate work? [...] One answer is that the poor person (or the Jew, or the Asian, or the Native American, or whoever) becomes, intellectually, linguistically, and emotionally, a "lessperson," and then a nonperson. 1998, John E. Tropman, Does America Hate the Poor?, page 6:
2. Something other than a person; an object.
   • For example, Benveniste [...] discusses the connection of first- and second-person pronouns with the speech situation, and even goes as far as to claim that the third person is a nonperson, since the referents of third-person pronouns are not speech-act participants. 2002, Ritva Laury, “Interaction, grounding, and third-person referential forms”, in Frank Brisard, editor, Grounding: The Epistemic Footing of Deixis and Reference, page 85:
   • No nonperson is psychologically indistinguishable from you. 2001, Eric T. Olson, “A Compound of Two Substances”, in Soul, Body, and Survival, page 77:
   • Taken together, all the results suggested that discrimination of person from nonperson slides was not controlled by an obvious single stimulus feature. 1995, Roger K. R. Thompson, “Natural and Relational Concepts in Animals”, in Comparative Approaches to Cognitive Science, page 179:

Forms

Relateds

unperson

Synonyms

subhuman

Translations (3)

de Unperson (not a real person; a subhuman) · fi epähenkilö (not a real person; a subhuman) · ko 사람이 아닌 (not a real person; a subhuman)