Personhood

//ˈpɝ.sən.hʊd// noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The state or period of being a person. countable, uncountable

    "[Animals] are conscious; they are subjectively aware; they have interests; they can suffer. No characteristic other than sentience is required for personhood."

  2. 2
    being a person wordnet
  3. 3
    The status of being considered as a person. countable, uncountable

    "A majority of the present world's peoples delay the conferral of personhood (to children)."

Synonyms

All synonyms
identitypersonshipselfhood

Example

More examples

"Your dogmatic religious idea of fetal personhood is irrelevant to a society where not everyone has the same religion."

Etymology

From person + -hood.

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