Unperson
noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A person who has been stripped of rights, identity, or humanity; to dehumanize.
"With his identity stolen, he became an unperson, unable to prove his existence to the government."
- 2 a person regarded as nonexistent and having no rights; a person whose existence is systematically ignored (especially for ideological or political reasons) wordnet
- 1 To strip (a person) of rights, identity, or humanity. transitive
"Unhappily, shortcomings here on the part of even a few schools provide a handle for the type of irresponsible generalization that recently labeled the lay professor on the Catholic campus "unwanted, unpaid, uncared for and unpersoned.""
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"With his identity stolen, he became an unperson, unable to prove his existence to the government."
Etymology
From un- + person. Coined by George Orwell in 1949 as part of the Newspeak in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, where it refers to a person who has been executed or has fallen out of favor; whose entire history has been erased.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.