Impersonal

//ɪmˈpɝsənəl// adj, noun

adj, noun ·Moderate ·High school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    An impersonal word or construct.
Adjective
  1. 1
    Not personal; not representing a person; not having personality.

    "The great tragedians of Greece reveal to us their people's exquisite sense of beauty, and their faith in an awful, an almighty, but an impersonal power, called Fate"

  2. 2
    Lacking warmth or emotion; cold.

    "She sounded impersonal as she gave her report of the Nazi death camps."

  3. 3
    Not having a subject, or having a third person pronoun without an antecedent.

    "The verb “rain” is impersonal in sentences like “It’s raining.”"

Adjective
  1. 1
    having no personal preference wordnet
  2. 2
    not relating to or responsive to individual persons wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
objectiveabstractaloofbackwardbashfulblank

Example

More examples

"Let's begin with capitalism, a word that has gone largely out of fashion. The approved reference now is to the market system. This shift minimizes — indeed, deletes — the role of wealth in the economic and social system. And it sheds the adverse connotation going back to Marx. Instead of the owners of capital or their attendants in control, we have the admirably impersonal role of market forces. It would be hard to think of a change in terminology more in the interest of those to whom money accords power."

Etymology

From French impersonnel, from Latin impersōnālis, from im- (“not”) + persōnālis (“personal”), equivalent to im- + personal.

Related phrases

impersonal passiveimpersonal subjectimpersonal verb

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.