personification examples of homework

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Personification worksheets.

Personification is a figurative language technique . Personfication is when a speaker gives an object or idea human characteristics, abilities, or qualities. This page contains worksheets and resources on personification. Use these to give students practice with identifying personification.

An Example of Personification The frost paints the pines in the winter time.

In this example the writer gives frost the ability to paint. Frost can't paint. People paint. Since the writer gives frost this human ability, the writer personifies it.This is more poetic than saying that the pine trees were frosty.

Sometimes students have difficulty identifying personification and distinguishing it from other figurative language techniques . I believe that this is because they need more practice working with examples of personification . These worksheets will give students the experience that they need.

Personification Common Core State Standards

58 Comments

Thomas p sliva.

These are perfect for the ELA state test prep…..soooooo timely! Thank you!

Polly Burgoon

Thank you so much for your wonderful resources! I absolutely love them!

Hello! This website is great.

The “Personification Worksheet 9” Answers link leads to the “Personification Worksheet 8” Answer Key.

Can you please upload the correct answer key?

Thanks for taking the time to make this website and avail these resources to us!

I fixed it. Thank you for pointing out this error.

Synthia Maxwell

I love your worksheets! Would love to see some worksheets where students practice writing their own examples of personification. Thanks for all your work!

Check out some of these figurative language activities . Thank you for visiting!

I’m so exited to learn personification. Thank you so much

Andrea Balestrieri

So helpful! My whole class passed this portion of the state test because I used these. Thank you!

I’m so happy to hear it. Thank you for sharing your experience.

Great worksheets. I find some very helpful and use them for middle school students! Thanks!

I teach developmental reading at a college. Your worksheets have been a blessing. Thank you!

These are amazing .I am really happy that now I am able to differentiate simile metaphor and personification.Thank you so much ……

It has helped my teacher and myself I’m in Std 5 and I’m always in the top #3. But , for some reason I needed to learn this subject a little more.

Good worksheets.They really help.

I love the worksheets and the variety provided. I really like the fact I can select specific sheets based on the students levels. This was my first time visiting, but will not be my last. Thanks!!

I’m so happy to hear it. I am committed to continuing to develop and improve the site.

Wow – what a site! I’m an Aussie teacher and this stuff is terrific. Thank you for these great worksheets! Summer Sun by Robert Louis Stevenson is another great poem which I use to help students identify personification. Cheers Justine

these worksheets are the best

I teach English as a second language to middle schoolers in Indonesia. Your worksheets have been very helpful. Thank you for sharing!

I’m so happy to hear it.

I’m so grateful to you for sharing these fantastic resources

The worksheets are VERY useful!Thank you so much!

Your worksheets are amazing, they are really helpful, can you to upload answers for personification…pleeease, thanks for sharing!!!

Jennifer Campbell

Thanks for these worksheets. They are just what my Y4/5 students need. It has cut down on my lesson prep time too.

Keep them coming!!

Jennifer Campbell, Sydney, Australia

I’m doing some big additions this summer. You are going to love it.

Thanks for taking the time to comment.

These are great! I liked the ones you had on irony as well. Thank you for sharing! 🙂

Awesome. Check out the new online versions:

Irony Practice 1 Irony Practice 2

i dont understand i want worksheets for grade 6

These worksheets were exactly what I needed to reinforce our lessons.

Thank you so much! I’m tutoring a student and we’re doing figurative language this week. I decided to start with personification as it can get quite fun. This is exactly what I was looking for.

Concerned with the terminology in some of these examples-

What concerns you?

Thank you for working so hard to create such solid interesting materials and then sharing them so selflessly. They are much appreciated.

I love these worksheets!! They are very helpful to my gifted students. Are there answers to these sheets?

very helpful…are the answers available?

Faith Purchase

This is awesome!!

I have been told that anthropomorphism is very similar to personification but the difference is that with anthropomorphism, the object or animal is actually doing something human. With personification, the object or animal just seems like it’s doing something human. For example: “The fog waltzed through the hills.” This is personification. “The fog grew legs, grabbed a partner, and waltzed through the hills to the tune of ‘Piano Man'” This is anthropomorphism.

I am functioning under the definition that anthropomorphism is when an animal is given human traits or characteristics; however, the longer I run this site the more that I realize that arguing about literature terminology is like arguing about pizza toppings.

These worksheets were just what I was looking for and is there any way for me to view the answers?

I will try to add answers soon.

Are the answer keys available for any of these worksheets?

Thanks so much. They were just what I needed.

great worksheets on personification, thank you so much, I will use these in class on Monday!

Thanks got just what I was looking for!

These are wonderful, exactly what I needed.

thanks 4 ur worksheets it helps me alot

Are the answer keys available for the personification worksheets?

Excellent worksheets!

Maricel Cua

just what i need. hope you put the answers too. thank you.

I find some of the sentences used in your personification worksheets offensive…we need to be careful what we chose as professional educators to write as examples.

I agree. We should also preview all materials prior to using them in our classrooms. That way we can make sure that such materials meet our standards, professional or otherwise.

Great answer!

Suzanne Williams

LOVED THE WORKSHEETS! Very creative and fun too!

The worksheets were just what I needed for my students. Thanks a million!

Happy to help. Thanks for visiting!

Just what I was looking for; Thanks!

These worksheets are perfect! Thanks!

Martha Parnell

I found your worksheets on figurative Language very helpful.

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Literary Devices

Literary devices, terms, and elements, personification, definition of personification.

As a literary device, personification is the projection of characteristics that normally belong only to humans onto inanimate objects, animals, deities, or forces of nature. These characteristics can include verbs of actions that only humans do or adjectives that describe a human condition. The characteristics can also be emotions, feelings, or motives given to objects incapable of thought. For example, if someone said, “the trees whispered their discontent,” this would personify the trees both as able to whisper and of feeling unhappy. Personification is also sometimes referred to as anthropomorphism when it is used to give human feelings and actions to animals.

Personification can also mean the embodiment of an abstract idea or quality. This definition of personification can extend even to humans. For example, a person can be said to personify the patriotism of his country or the ambition of her company. We could say, “She is the personification of the grit and determination needed to make this start-up work.”

Examples of Personification from Common Speech

We use many examples of personification in every day speech. Some characteristics have become quite common to attribute to certain things, such as the following:

• Justice is blind
• Her heart skipped a beat
• The sun smiled down on them
• The stars winked
• The party died down
• The city never sleeps
• The wind howled
• The iron gates looked down at them cruelly
• The house sighed
• The car sputtered and coughed before starting

Significance of Personification in Literature

Personification and anthropomorphism has been a part of storytelling for thousands of years, evident in Aesop’s Fables and fairy tales from many different cultures. Gods in myths and legends are often given human qualities even though they are distinctly not human. This makes them examples of personification.

Personification has remained popular throughout the centuries, given that it can add aesthetic qualities to a work and provide a way for authors to describe inanimate objects. It also inserts more meaning into the inexplicable things like forces of nature. Often the use of personification also helps to show a character’s own attitudes toward a certain thing if they project or ascribe their own feelings onto an inanimate object.

Anthropomorphism is also still very popular, especially in stories for children and the fable genre. It is also sometimes used in satirical works, such as George Orwell’s Animal Farm , and graphic novels, such as Art Spiegelman’s Maus .

Examples of Personification from Literature

TITANIA: No night is now with hymn or carol blessed. Therefore the moon, the governess of floods, Pale in her anger, washes all the air, That rheumatic diseases do abound.

( A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare)

In this example of personification, Shakespeare uses the concept of the moon as a character. The moon is feminized (as often it is in literature, if given a gender) and said to be a governess of floods. The color of the moon lends to the depiction of “her anger” and she is said to cause more disease to spread due to her displeasure. Shakespeare thus gives the moon new descriptive qualities, emotions, and motivation.

Her heart was divided between concern for her sister, and resentment against all the others.

( Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen)

In this excerpt from Pride and Prejudice , Jane Austen writes about a heart that feels concern and resentment. The heart in question is of the character Elizabeth. It’s clear that Elizabeth is the one divided between concern for her sister Jane and resentment for the others, yet Austen personifies Elizabeth’s heart to have these feelings to add some poetic sensibility to the sentence.

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, And spills the upper boulders in the sun, And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

(“Mending Wall” by Robert Frost)

Robert Frost’s poem “Mending Wall” contains the famous line “Good fences make good neighbors.” This excerpt is from the beginning of the poem, and sets up a contrast between the neighbors who keep fixing the wall between them and the “something” that doesn’t love this wall. Though Frost never specifies what it is that “doesn’t love a wall,” we can take it to mean that nature revolts against artificial separations and borders. Winter cold causes the wall to break in different places, and Frost gives winter the motivation for doing this.

The Western States nervous under the beginning change. Texas and Oklahoma, Kansas and Arkansas, New Mexico, Arizona, California. A single family moved from the land. Pa borrowed money from the bank, and now the bank wants the land. The land company–that’s the bank when it has land –wants tractors, not families on the land. Is a tractor bad? Is the power that turns the long furrows wrong? If this tractor were ours it would be good–not mine, but ours. If our tractor turned the long furrows of our land, it would be good. Not my land, but ours. We could love that tractor then as we have loved this land when it was ours. But the tractor does two things–it turns the land and turns us off the land. There is little difference between this tractor and a tank. The people are driven, intimidated, hurt by both. We must think about this.

( The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck)

John Steinbeck’s classic The Grapes of Wrath is set during the Dust Bowl era of the 1930s. This personification example begins with the “Western States” being nervous. Of course the states themselves did not feel anxiety, but the people in those states started to feel nervous about the diminishing returns from the land. Bankers started repossessing land, and thus Steinbeck personifies the banks to want the land.

When death comes like the hungry bear in autumn; when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse to buy me, and snaps the purse shut… I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering: what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

(“When Death Comes” by Mary Oliver)

Mary Oliver’s poem “When Death Comes” uses several different ways to describe death. She begins here with the image of death as a hungry bear. Then Oliver gives death the human characteristics of having money and wanting to make a purchase, thereby personifying it. Thus death is full of desire in this poem. Oliver uses this concept to contrast her own desire to live her life as fully as possible before death comes for her.

But, on one side of the portal, and rooted almost at the threshold, was a wild rose-bush, covered, in this month of June, with its delicate gems, which might be imagined to offer their fragrance and fragile beauty to the prisoner as he went in, and to the condemned criminal as he came forth to his doom, in token that the deep heart of Nature could pity and be kind to him.

( The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne)

In this excerpt from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter , there is a juxtaposition between the wild rose-bush and its location, namely the prison. The rose-bush is “delicate” and has “fragile beauty,” whereas the “condemned criminal” is going “forth to his doom.” Hawthorne uses personification to say that the rose-bush offers its fragrance, and thus a measure of its innocence, to the prisoner. He goes on to personify Nature as full of both kindness and pity.

Test Your Knowledge of Personification

1. Choose the correct personification definition:

A. The act of literally making something human. B. A person who strives to be the best he or she can be. C. A literary device which gives human qualities to nonhuman things.

[spoiler title=”Answer to Question #1″]

Answer: C is the correct answer.[/spoiler]

2. Which of these lines from Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 contains personification?

A. Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? B. Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade… C. So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see…

[spoiler title=”Answer to Question #2″] Answer: In B , Shakespeare personifies death as being able to brag, and thus this is the correct answer.[/spoiler]

3. Which of the parts of this excerpt from Mary Oliver’s “Wild Geese” make it an example of personification?

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination

A. Whoever you are B. No matter how lonely C. The world offers itself D. To your imagination

[spoiler title=”Answer to Question #3″]

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50+ Engaging Personification Examples That Bring Writing To Life

This literary device adds meaning.

Strong writers use literary devices like personification to make their writing more vivid and engaging. Learn the definition of personification, plus find lots of engaging personification examples to share with your students.

What is personification?

Personification is a literary device, a technique authors use to add meaning to their writing. Put simply, writers use personification when they give human characteristics to non-human animals or objects. In other words, an author describes a non-human object as doing something human.

• Example: “The babbling brook meandered alongside the path, skipping and jumping over the rocks.”

In this example, the author doesn’t literally mean the brook babbles, meanders, skips, or jumps. Instead, they use these human activities to make the sounds and actions of the brook more clear to the reader.

Personification vs. Anthropomorphism

These two literary devices are sometimes confused, but they have different meanings. When an author uses anthropomorphism, they have a non-human character literally act in human ways, such as talking animals.

• Personification example: My dog cried mournfully as I left, begging me not to leave him alone for the day.
• Anthropomorphism example: “Don’t go,” sobbed Rex, tears running down his furry nose. “I can’t bear to be alone all day long!”

In the first example—personification—the dog displays human-like behavior but does not literally cry, beg, or speak. In the second—anthropomorphism—the dog does literally cry and talk. Anthropomorphism is common in children’s books and fairy tales, while personification can appear in any kind of writing, including nonfiction.

Importance of Personification

Writers use personification to bring life and meaning to their writing. By associating a description with something human and familiar, they make it easier for their reader to relate to it. When an author gives an object human characteristics, like a “screaming alarm clock” or a “murmuring breeze,” their writing becomes more engaging.

We’ve all had days where we feel like computers “hate” us, or our alarm clock is “scolding” us until we get out of bed. When authors use this type of personification, we can immediately understand the feelings and emotions they’re trying to convey. The setting and atmosphere become clearer, helping us understand human characters a little better.

General Personification Examples

• The flowers danced in the breeze.
• A soft breeze tickled her cheek.
• That hot fudge sundae is really calling my name.
• The sun smiled down on us as we picnicked in the park.
• Time flies when you’re having fun.
• The old stairs groaned with each step he took.
• After a long day, my soft bed beckoned me with open arms.
• Moonlight caressed the water’s surface, glinting on each tiny wave.
• The storm raged ashore, destroying all that lie before it.
• The mountains stood tall and proud, guarding the valley below.
• The suspicious security cam followed her every move, determined to catch her in the act.
• Hungry waves ate away at the shoreline.
• After many false starts, the car’s engine finally coughed to life.
• Dark clouds gathered in the sky, plotting their attack on the land below.
• The typewriter keys jumped and jigged beneath his flying fingers.
• The sweet aroma of freshly baked cookies wooed them all into the kitchen.
• Dawn stretched itself across the landscape, embracing the dew-laden flowers.
• Overhead, the leaves whispered softly in the wind.
• Doubts attacked him left and right as he tried to make a decision.
• The fog crept slowly over the ground, sneaking its way into every hollow.

Personification Examples From Literature

• “There is something subversive about this garden of Serena’s. … It breathes, in the warmth, breathing itself in.” – The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
• “A waft of wind came sweeping down the laurel-walk, and trembled through the boughs of the chestnut: it wandered away—away—to an indefinite distance—it died.” – Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
• “All in vain; because Death, in approaching him, had stalked with his black shadow before him, and enveloped the victim.” – The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe
• “The ship danced over the waves, eager to return to Ithaca.” – The Odyssey by Homer
• “The windmill loomed over the farm, its blades turning with a relentless determination …” – Animal Farm by George Orwell
• “The fire’s fingers reached out, devouring the pages of the forbidden books.” – Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
• “The moors sighed with the weight of the secrets they held, whispering tales of love and revenge.” – Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
• “The sun persists in rising, so I make myself stand.” – The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
• “Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon / Who is already sick and pale with grief …” – Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
• “The Triwizard Cup is waiting. It is waiting for you.” – Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling

Personification Examples From Poetry

• “Because I could not stop for Death – / He kindly stopped for me – / The Carriage held but just Ourselves – / And Immortality.” – Because I Could Not Stop for Death by Emily Dickinson
• “I wandered lonely as a cloud …” – Daffodils by William Wordsworth
• “The moon was shining sulkily / Because she thought the sun / Had got no business to be there / After the day was done.” – The Walrus and the Carpenter by Lewis Carroll
• “Earth felt the wound; and Nature from her seat, / Sighing, through all her works, gave signs of woe.” – Paradise Lost by John Milton
• “The aspens at the cross-roads talk together / Of rain …” – Aspens by Edward Thomas
• “And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain / Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before.” – The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe
• “The troubled sky reveals / The grief it feels.” – Snow-Flakes by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
• “Eight balloons no one was buyin’ / All broke loose one afternoon. / Eight balloons with strings a-flyin’, / Free to do what they wanted to.” – Eight Balloons by Shel Silverstein
• “The little white clouds are racing over the sky …” – Magdalen Walks by Oscar Wilde
• “The fog comes / on little cat feet. / It sits looking / over harbor and city / on silent haunches / and then moves on.” – Fog by Carl Sandburg

Song Lyrics Personification Examples

• “You start to freeze as horror looks you right between the eyes.” – Thriller by Michael Jackson
• “And so today, my world it smiles.” – Thank You by Led Zeppelin
• “I want to wake up in a city / That doesn’t sleep.” – New York, New York by John Kander and Fred Ebb
• “Time grabs you by the wrist, directs you where to go.” – Good Riddance (Time of Your Life) by Green Day
• “They reach into your room, oh, just feel their gentle touch. / When all hope is gone, sad songs say so much.” – Sad Songs by Elton John
• “The highway don’t care if you’re all alone.” – Highway Don’t Care by Tim McGraw
• “And the saddest fear comes creeping in …” – I Knew You Were Trouble by Taylor Swift
• “The high yellow moon won’t come out to play.” – Concrete Jungle by Bob Marley
• “A shining new era is tiptoeing nearer …” – Be Prepared from The Lion King
• “Here comes the sun.” – Here Comes the Sun by The Beatles

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The Best Personification Examples

Written by Dan

Last updated February 16, 2024

Have you ever wondered how to bring your writing or classroom lessons to life? Personification examples can help do just that!

Teachers can use metaphor, symbolism and analogy to make reading more engaging by giving inanimate objects, ideas and animals human characteristics.

From classic literature like The Velveteen Rabbit and beloved children’s stories such as Winnie-the-Pooh right up to modern favourites such as Monster’s Inc., personification is an excellent way for educators to bridge the gap between books where characters come alive on the page.

In this post, we’ll look at some fantastic examples of personification from popular media so that you can inject creativity into your writing style.

Related : For more, check out our Alliteration Examples For Every Year Group article here.

Table of Contents

100 Examples Of Personification

• The wind whispered secrets through the rustling leaves.
• The sun stretched its golden arms to embrace the day.
• Time crawled at a snail’s pace as we waited in anticipation.
• The old house groaned under the weight of its years.
• The moon cast a watchful eye over the silent earth.
• The storm clouds grumbled like an old man.
• The waves danced to the rhythm of the coastal breeze.
• The city lights winked at the night travelers.
• The shadows crept across the walls as the candle flickered its last breath.
• The mountain loomed over the valley like a stoic guardian.
• The book’s pages fluttered eagerly as the wind turned them.
• The flowers bowed their heads in the gentle rain.
• The river sang its song as it flowed over the rocks.
• The fire crackled with laughter in the hearth.
• The car engine coughed to life on a cold morning.
• The trees swayed to the music of the wind.
• The stars twinkled mischievously in the velvet night.
• The door protested with a creak as it opened.
• The clock hands marched in unison, keeping time.
• The teapot whistled a tune of readiness.
• The autumn leaves waltzed to the ground.
• The frost painted delicate patterns on the window.
• The sunflowers turned their heads to follow the sun’s journey.
• The night wrapped the world in a blanket of darkness.
• The chocolate cake’s aroma beckoned from the kitchen.
• The garden path wound lazily through the flowers.
• The kettle purred contentedly on the stove.
• The hills rolled gently across the landscape.
• The raindrops drummed a steady beat on the rooftop.
• The mirror reflected the room’s soul.
• The fog crept in on silent feet.
• The bridge arched its back over the river.
• The ice glistened like a thousand diamonds in the sun.
• The walls soaked up the room’s history.
• The tires hummed a lullaby on the smooth road.
• The pen danced across the paper, leaving a trail of words.
• The road stretched out like a lazy cat in the sun.
• The wind carved sculptures out of the snowdrifts, shaping them with an invisible hand.
• The guitar’s strings whispered the melody of an old love song.
• The sun’s rays kissed the dew-covered grass, waking it gently.
• The thunder roared like an angry lion in the distance.
• The cactus stood like a lonely sentinel in the desert.
• The old gate greeted every visitor with a squeak and a groan.
• The night sky draped itself over the world, studded with starry jewels.
• The mountains reached up to brush the soft underbelly of the sky.
• The brook babbled stories of its journey to anyone who would listen.
• The clock’s face blushed as the seconds ticked by, always watched.
• The rain’s fingers tapped on the window, beckoning me to look outside.
• The fog whispered ghostly tales as it shrouded the town.
• The forest held its breath as the hunters passed through.
• The abandoned barn sagged with sorrow, missing its former glory.
• The coffee’s aroma wrapped around me like a warm scarf.
• The train tracks snaked through the countryside, connecting towns like stitches.
• The fireworks exploded with joy, celebrating the night.
• The willow’s branches swirled in a graceful dance with the wind.
• The ocean’s waves clapped against the shore in applause.
• The apple’s skin blushed red in the sun’s warm gaze.
• The ivy hugged the walls of the old schoolhouse.
• The piano’s keys giggled as little fingers stumbled over them.
• The sun dipped its toes into the horizon before taking the plunge into night.
• The stairs moaned under the weight of heavy footsteps.
• The blanket of snow muffled the sounds of the forest creatures.
• The roses’ petals unfurled like secrets being told.
• The bell tower announced the hour with a throaty chime.
• The path knew the soles of many shoes, guiding each traveler’s journey.
• The wind’s fingers tousled my hair playfully.
• The moonbeam’s brush painted a silver path across the water.
• The tires gripped the road like a firm handshake.
• The candle flame danced and twirled in a private performance.
• The candle flame danced and twirled in a private performance, casting a warm glow on the room’s secrets.
• The morning stretched and yawned, casting off the shadows of the night.
• The mailbox stood at attention, guarding the day’s news and secrets.
• The skyscrapers reached for the clouds, yearning to touch the sky.
• The bread’s crust crackled with laughter as it cooled on the windowsill.
• The curtains billowed like sails on a ship, charting a course through the ocean of air.
• The computer hummed a steady rhythm, orchestrating the symphony of digital tasks.
• The keys on the keyboard clicked like tap dancers on a stage.
• The hills wore a cloak of green, lush and vibrant against the sky.
• The sun’s last rays stroked the horizon lovingly, saying goodbye to the day.
• The shadows played hide and seek as the streetlights flickered to life.
• The river wrapped the city in a watery embrace, a liquid ribbon tying it together.
• The wind’s howl was a symphony of nature’s raw power.
• The moon’s pale light draped the world in a gown of ghostly beauty.
• The bookshelf groaned under the weight of stories untold.
• The coat rack greeted each garment with a wooden hug.
• The wine’s bouquet danced gracefully in the glass, a prelude to taste.
• The guitar’s body resonated with the heartbeats of melodies past.
• The velvet night sky wore a tiara of twinkling stars.
• The tree’s branches scratched at the sky, itching to leave their mark.
• The clouds sailed across the sky, a fleet of ships on a voyage to the unknown.
• The popcorn’s aroma leapt from the bowl, inviting moviegoers to partake.
• The lawn’s green blades stood at attention, an army of nature’s soldiers.
• The stadium’s seats echoed with the ghosts of cheers and victories.
• The paintbrush swept across the canvas, a conductor directing its colors.
• The alarm clock screamed its wake-up call, a relentless drill sergeant.
• The teacup cradled the warmth, a porcelain nest for comfort.
• The chocolate melted on the tongue, whispering sweet nothings.
• The swing set swayed back and forth, cradling the laughter of children in its arms.
• The ice skated across the glass, chilling the drink with a cold caress.
• The attic stored memories in its dusty corners, holding them close like treasured keepsakes.

Related : For more, check out our How To Fix Grammar Mistakes here.

This table provides a variety of examples where personification is used to give human qualities to objects or abstract concepts, enhancing the imagery and emotional connection in both literary and everyday language.

Using Personification Examples In Description

The sun slowly rose over the horizon, its warm rays embracing the world below. The sky was painted with hues of pink and orange as if it were blushing at the sight of the sun’s arrival.

The clouds lazily drifted by like fluffy white pillows floating on a gentle breeze. In the distance, I could hear the trees whispering to each other, their leaves rustling in excitement for a new day. The birds sang sweetly in the morning air, melodies like a symphony that only nature could compose.

Walking along the path, I couldn’t help but feel that everything around me was alive and thriving with energy. It was as if Mother Nature had awakened from her slumber and was ready to greet us all with open arms.

The city was alive with energy as the sun began to set. The skyscrapers reached towards the sky like eager children trying to touch the clouds. The traffic flowed like a river, each car jostling for position like fish swimming upstream.

The neon lights blinked and flashed like dancers moving to an unseen beat. The smell of fresh pizza wafted through the air, tempting passersby with its delicious aroma.

The sound of music drifted down from open windows, filling the streets with melody and rhythm. Even the graffiti on the walls seemed alive, telling stories of rebellion and creativity. It was where anything could happen, and dreams could be made or broken instantly.

The sun slowly crept over the horizon, its warm fingers stretching across the sky. The birds chirped happily, their voices like a symphony filling the air with music. The flowers turned their faces towards the sun, basking in its golden glow as if worshipping it.

The trees swayed gently in the breeze, their branches reaching out to embrace each other as old friends reunited.

The clouds lazily drifted by overhead, their fluffy bodies taking on all sorts of shapes and sizes as if they were putting on a show just for me.

The waves crashed against the shore, their powerful bodies slamming into the sand with such force that I could feel it in my bones. It was as if nature had come alive before me, each element dancing and singing perfectly.

In this paragraph:

“The sun slowly crept up” is an example of personification because it suggests that the sun has human-like qualities (in this case, the ability to move slowly).

The birds chirped happily” is an example of personification because it suggests that the birds can feel emotions (happiness).

“The flowers turned their faces towards the sun” is an example of personification because it suggests that the flowers have human-like features (faces) and actions (turning).

“The trees swayed gently” is an example of personification because it suggests trees can move.

“The clouds lazily drifted by overhead” is an example of personification because it suggests that clouds have human-like qualities (laziness) and actions (drifting).

“The waves crashed against the shore” is an example of personification because it suggests that waves are capable of aggressive action (crashing).

Related : For more, check out our How To Use Exclamation Marks Correctly here.

Teaching Ideas For Personification

1. Introduce the concept: Explain to students that personification is a literary device used in writing to give human qualities or characteristics to objects, animals, or ideas.

2. Provide examples: Show students examples of personification in literature and poetry to help them understand how this style of writing works.

3. Practice exercises: Have students practice writing their sentences using personification to help them better grasp how to use the technique.

4. Discuss: Ask questions about how personification can be used in different types of writing and how it affects the meaning and imagery of a piece.

5. Group work: Assign groups of students to write stories or poems with personification as the central theme. Have groups present their work to the class and discuss what they have learned about personification.

6. Creative writing: Encourage students to use personification in their creative writing projects, such as short stories, poems, and novels. Provide feedback on how well they use personification and how it can be improved.

7. Apply to other subjects: Personification can also be used in other areas of study, such as history and science. Have students devise examples of how personification can apply to different subjects.

Personification Resources

Here are five websites that have resources about personification, along with a summary of their content and the relevant links:

• Literary Devices: Personification – This article on Literary Devices explains what personification is and provides examples of it in literature. It also discusses the purpose of using personification in writing and how to use it effectively. Link
• Poetry Foundation: Personification – The Poetry Foundation offers an overview of personification in poetry, including examples from famous poets like William Shakespeare and Emily Dickinson. The article also explores the history of personification as a literary device. Link
• ThoughtCo.: Understanding Personification in Literature – This article from ThoughtCo. Provides a comprehensive guide to understanding personification in literature. It covers topics such as the definition of personification, different types of personification, and how to analyze its use in literature. Link
• Literary Terms: Personification Examples – Literary Terms offers a list of examples of personification from various works of literature, including poems, novels, and short stories. Each model explains how the author uses personification to enhance their writing. Link
• Study.com: What is Personification? – Study.com provides a video lesson that explains what personification is and demonstrates its use through several examples from literature and everyday language. The lesson also includes a quiz to test your understanding of the topic. Link

Isn’t it remarkable how personification can breathe life into our writing and classroom lessons? We can create engaging, relatable narratives that captivate our readers or students by bestowing human characteristics upon inanimate objects, ideas, and animals.

From timeless classics like The Velveteen Rabbit to modern favorites such as Monsters Inc., personification is a powerful tool that helps bridge the gap between the page and the reader’s imagination. Can you visualize the magical world of talking toys, thinking cars, or feeling forests that this literary device can conjure?

As we’ve explored in this post, personification is not just a literary device but a gateway to creativity and engagement. You can transform your writing or teaching style from mundane to magical with a sprinkle of imagination, a dash of creativity, and a good dose of personification.

Isn’t it inspiring to consider the transformative journey you could embark upon with personification? So why wait? Start experimenting with this versatile literary device today, and watch as your words transform into a vibrant tapestry of characters that leap off the page!

Q1: What exactly is personification?

A1: That’s an excellent starting point! Personification is a literary device that attributes human characteristics to non-human entities like animals, objects, or abstract ideas. Can you imagine giving a sunset the ability to blush or a tree the capacity to whisper?

Q2: Why is it essential to teach personification in the classroom?

A2: Great question! Personification enhances students’ understanding of literature, fosters creativity, and helps them engage in complex thoughts. Can you envision the vibrant stories your students could create using personification?

Q3: Could you provide some examples of personification from popular literature?

A3: Absolutely! Consider The Velveteen Rabbit, where the titular toy rabbit comes to life, or Winnie-the-Pooh, where the animal characters exhibit human-like emotions and behaviours. Can you see how these examples make the narrative more engaging and relatable?

Q4: How can I introduce personification to my students?

A4: A good starting point is to discuss examples from their favorite books or films. You can also have them experiment with personification in their own writing. Can you visualize the excitement as your students explore this new literary device?

Q5: What are some activities that can help students practice personification?

A5: There are many creative ways to practice personification. Students could write dialogues for inanimate objects, create stories where animals behave like humans, or even draw pictures depicting personified objects. Can you sense the fun and learning these activities could bring to your classroom?

Q6: How can personification enhance students’ overall writing skills?

A6: By using personification, students learn to express their ideas creatively, making their writing more engaging and vivid. Can you perceive how this could elevate their writing to a whole new level?

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About The Author

I'm Dan Higgins, one of the faces behind The Teaching Couple. With 15 years in the education sector and a decade as a teacher, I've witnessed the highs and lows of school life. Over the years, my passion for supporting fellow teachers and making school more bearable has grown. The Teaching Couple is my platform to share strategies, tips, and insights from my journey. Together, we can shape a better school experience for all.

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Personification

Definition of personification.

Personification is a figure of speech in which an idea or thing is given human attributes and/or feelings or is spoken of as if it were human. Personification is a common form of metaphor in that human characteristics are attributed to nonhuman things. This allows writers to create life and motion within inanimate objects, animals, and even abstract ideas by assigning them recognizable human behaviors and emotions.

Personification is a literary device found often in children’s literature. This is an effective use of figurative language because personification relies on imagination for understanding. Of course, readers know at a logical level that nonhuman things cannot feel, behave, or think like humans. However, personifying nonhuman things can be an interesting, creative, and effective way for a writer to illustrate a concept or make a point.

For example, in his picture book, “The Day the Crayons Quit,” Drew Daywalt uses personification to allow the crayons to express their frustration at how they are (or are not) being used. This literary device is effective in creating an imaginary world for children in which crayons can communicate like humans.

Common Examples of Personification

Here are some examples of personification that may be found in everyday expression:

• My alarm yelled at me this morning.
• I like onions, but they don’t like me.
• The sign on the door insulted my intelligence.
• My phone is not cooperating with me today.
• That bus is driving too fast.
• My computer works very hard.
• However, the mail is running unusually slow this week.
• I wanted to get money, but the ATM died.
• This article says that spinach is good for you.
• Unfortunately, when she stepped on the Lego, her foot cried.
• The sunflowers hung their heads.
• That door jumped in my way.
• The school bell called us from outside.
• In addition, the storm trampled the town.
• I can’t get my calendar to work for me.
• This advertisement speaks to me.
• Fear gripped the patient waiting for a diagnosis.
• The cupboard groans when you open it.
• Can you see that star winking at you?
• Books reach out to kids.

Examples of Personification in Speech or Writing

Here are some examples of personification that may be found in everyday writing or conversation:

• My heart danced when he walked in the room.
• The hair on my arms stood after the performance.
• Why is your plant pouting in the corner?
• The wind is whispering outside.
• Additionally, that picture says a lot.
• Her eyes are not smiling at us.
• Also, my brain is not working fast enough today.
• Those windows are watching us.
• Our coffee maker wishes us good morning.
• The sun kissed my cheeks when I went outside.

Famous Personification Examples

Think you haven’t heard of any  famous personification examples? Here are some well-known and recognizable titles and quotes featuring this figure of speech:

• “The Brave Little Toaster” ( novel by Thomas M. Disch and adapted animated film series)
• “This Tornado Loves You” (song by Neko Case)
• “Happy Feet” (animated musical film)
• “Time Waits for No One” (song by The Rolling Stones)
• “The Little Engine that Could” (children’s book by Watty Piper)
•    “The sea was angry that day, my friends – like an old man trying to send back soup in a deli.” (Seinfeld television series)
•    “Life moves pretty fast.” (movie “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”)
•    “The dish ran away with the spoon.” (“ Hey, diddle, diddle ” by Mother Goose)
•    “The Heart wants what it wants – or else it does not care” ( Emily Dickinson )
•    “Once there was a tree, and she loved a little boy.” (“The Giving Tree” by Shel Silverstein)

Difference Between Personification and Anthropomorphism

Personification is often confused with the literary term anthropomorphism due to fundamental similarities. However, there is a difference between these two literary devices . Anthropomorphism is when human characteristics or qualities are applied to animals or deities, not inanimate objects or abstract ideas. As a literary device, anthropomorphism allows an animal or deity to behave as a human. This is reflected in Greek dramas in which gods would appear and involve themselves in human actions and relationships.

In addition to gods, writers use anthropomorphism to create animals that display human traits or likenesses such as wearing clothes or speaking. There are several examples of this literary device in popular culture and literature. For example, Mickey Mouse is a character that illustrates anthropomorphism in that he wears clothes and talks like a human, though he is technically an animal. Other such examples are Winnie the Pooh, Paddington Bear, and Thomas the Tank Engine.

Therefore, while anthropomorphism is limited to animals and deities, personification can be more widely applied as a literary device by including inanimate objects and abstract ideas. Personification allows writers to attribute human characteristics to nonhuman things without turning those things into human-like characters, as is done with anthropomorphism.

Writing Personification

Overall, as a literary device, personification functions as a means of creating imagery and connections between the animate and inanimate for readers. Therefore, personification allows writers to convey meaning in a creative and poetic way. These figures of speech enhance a reader’s understanding of concepts and comparisons , interpretations of symbols and themes , and enjoyment of language.

Here are instances in which it’s effective to use personification in writing:

Demonstrate Creativity

Personification demonstrates a high level of creativity. To be valuable as a figure of speech, the human attributes assigned to a nonhuman thing through personification must make sense in some way. In other words, human characteristics can’t just be assigned to any inanimate object as a literary device. There must be some connection between them that resonates with the reader, demanding creativity on the part of the writer to find that connection and develop successful personification.

Exercise Poetic Skill

Many poets rely on personification to create vivid imagery and memorable symbolism . For example, in Edgar Allan Poe ’s poem “ The Raven ,” the poet skillfully personifies the raven through allowing it to speak one word, “nevermore,” in response to the narrator ’s questions. This is a powerful use of personification, as the narrator ends up projecting more complex and intricate human characteristics onto the bird as the poem continues though the raven only speaks the same word.

Create Humor

Personification can be an excellent tool in creating humor for a reader. This is especially true among young readers who tend to appreciate the comedic contrast between a nonhuman thing being portrayed as possessing human characteristics. Personification allows for creating humor related to incongruity and even absurdity.

Enhance Imagination

Overall, personification is a literary device that allows readers to enhance their imagination by “believing” that something inanimate or nonhuman can behave, think, or feel as a human. In fact, people tend to personify things in their daily lives by assigning human behavior or feelings to pets and even objects. For example, a child may assign emotions to a favorite stuffed animal to match their own feelings. In addition, a cat owner may pretend their pet is speaking to them and answer back. This allows writers and readers to see a reflection of humanity through imagination. Readers may also develop a deeper understanding of human behavior and emotion.

Examples of Personification in Literature

Example #1: the house on mango street (sandra cisneros).

But the house on Mango Street is not the way they told it at all. It’s small and red with tight steps in front and windows so small you’d think they were holding their breath.

In the first chapter of Cisneros’s book, the narrator Esperanza is describing the house into which she and her family are moving. Her parents have promised her that they would find a spacious and welcoming home for their family, similar to what Esperanza has seen on television. However, their economic insecurity has prevented them from getting a home that represents the American dream.

Cisneros uses personification to emphasize the restrictive circumstances of Esperanza’s family. To Esperanza, the windows of the house appear to be “holding their breath” due to their small size, creating an image of suffocation. This personification not only enhances the description of the house on Mango Street for the reader, but it also reflects Esperanza’s feelings about the house, her family, and her life. Like the windows, Esperanza is holding her breath as well, with the hope of a better future and the fear of her dreams not becoming reality.

Example #2:  Ex-Basketball Player (John Updike)

Off work, he hangs around Mae’s Luncheonette. Grease-gray and kind of coiled, he plays pinball, Smokes those thin cigars, nurses lemon phosphates. Flick seldom says a word to Mae, just nods Beyond her face toward bright applauding tiers Of Necco Wafers, Nibs, and Juju Beads.

In his poem about a former basketball player named Flick, Updike recreates an arena crowd watching Flick play pinball by personifying the candy boxes in the luncheonette. The snack containers “applaud” Flick as he spends his free time playing a game that is isolating and requires no athletic skill. However, the personification in Updike’s poem is a reflection of how Flick’s life has changed since he played and set records for his basketball team in high school.

Flick’s fans have been replaced by packages of sugary snacks with little substance rather than real people appreciating his skills and cheering him on. Like the value of his audience , Flick’s own value as a person has diminished into obscurity and the mundane now that he is an ex-basketball player.

Example #3:  How Cruel Is the Story of Eve (Stevie Smith)

It is only a legend , You say? But what Is the meaning of the legend If not To give blame to women most And most punishment? This is the meaning of a legend that colours All human thought; it is not found among animals. How cruel is the story of Eve, What responsibility it has In history For misery.

In her poem, Smith personifies the story of Eve as it is relayed in the first book of the Bible,  Genesis . Smith attributes several human characteristics to this story, such as cruelty and responsibility. Therefore, this enhances the deeper meaning of the poem which is that Eve is not to blame for her actions, essentially leading to the “fall” of man and expulsion from Paradise In addition, she is not to blame for the subjugation and inequality that women have faced throughout history and tracing back to Eve.

Eve’s “story” or “legend” in the poem is accused by the poet of coloring “all human thought.” In other words, Smith is holding the story responsible for the legacy of punishment towards women throughout history by its portrayal of Eve, the first woman, as a temptress and sinner. The use of this literary device is effective in separating Eve’s character as a woman from the manner in which her story is told.

Related posts:

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• 10 Fun Examples of Personification in Poetry
• Romeo and Juliet Personification
• 10 Best Personification Examples in Poems
• Brevity is the Soul of Wit
• The Fault, Dear Brutus
• Hamlet Act-I, Scene-I Study Guide

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Personification

Personification Definition

What is personification? Here’s a quick and simple definition:

Personification is a type of figurative language in which non-human things are described as having human attributes, as in the sentence, "The rain poured down on the wedding guests, indifferent to their plans." Describing the rain as "indifferent" is an example of personification, because rain can't be "indifferent," nor can it feel any other human emotion. However, saying that the rain feels indifferent poetically emphasizes the cruel timing of the rain. Personification can help writers to create more vivid descriptions, to make readers see the world in new ways, and to more powerfully capture the human experience of the world (since people really do often interpret the non-human entities of the world as having human traits).

Some additional key details about personification:

• Personification isn't exclusive to the use of human attributes to describe non-human things. If a writer describes a non-human thing as performing a human action, the writer is personifying that thing. The sentence, "The rain mocked the wedding guests' plans," qualifies as personification just as much as the sentence, "The rain was indifferent," does.
• The word "personification" has another, separate meaning from its function as a literary device. The word can also be used to indicate that someone embodies a certain quality or concept. For instance, some people think that the Queen of England is the personification— or the embodiment—of civility. However, this guide focuses only on personification as a literary device.

Personification Pronunciation

Here's how to pronounce personification: per- sahn -if-ick-ay-shun

Personification Explained

Personification is a powerful and widely-used literary tool for several reasons. One reason is that it allows readers to develop a greater sense of relation to and identification with non-human entities. Attributing a human emotion to something inanimate—as in the sentence about "indifferent rain"—can make that thing easier to understand and more vivid in the reader's imagination, while at the same time presenting a significantly more complex description than is possible with the use of traditional adjectives like "wet" or "gray".

Personifying a Non-Human Thing as a Complete Person

Personification typically involves bestowing a single human quality upon a non-human thing. For instance:

• The rain was indifferent to their plans.
• The waves winked in the sunlight.
• The wind played hide-and-go-seek among the trees.

However, sometimes personification involves referring to a non-human thing as a complete person with many human qualities. Consider the way in which old-fashioned ship captains referred to their vessels as "she," or the way in which Kanye West refers to his beloved city of Chicago as a girl named "Windy." (Scroll down to "Personification in Music" for an analysis of those lyrics.) Both cases count as personification—Kanye asks us to momentarily re-imagine something nonhuman (Chicago) as human, because that way we'll be able to understand that the city has a personality and a soul that make him feel connected to it just as he would feel connected to a romantic partner. Similarly, it was common for sea captains back in the day to casually refer to their ships as "she" in order to convey that they felt as much respect, gratitude, and responsibility for the ships as they would towards a woman they loved.

Personification vs. Anthropomorphism

Personification is the attribution of human characteristics to a non-human entity for the purpose of creating figurative language and imagery . Anthropomorphism , by contrast, is the literal attribution of human characteristics to animals and other non-human things, often for the purpose of creating a specific type of character: a non-human being that behaves like a human. Winnie the Pooh, the Little Engine that Could, and Simba from the movie The Lion King are all examples of anthropomorphism. The human qualities assigned to these characters are not just figurative ways of describing them, as they are in personification. Rather, in anthropomorphism the non-human entities actually do human things like talking, falling in love, wiggling their eyebrows, and generally behaving like people behave.

Winnie the Pooh, the Little Engine that Could, and Simba from The Lion King are not examples of personification. When we use personification, we don't create characters, but instead simply describe non-human things as possessing human characteristics, like in the sentence, "The wind played hide-and-go-seek among the trees." In this case, the wind didn't actually grow arms, legs, and a mouth to count down from twenty. That would be anthropomorphism. Instead, the wind looks and behaves as wind normally does, but through the power of personification the reader can now imagine the wind's movement in a completely new way, because he or she can now compare that movement to the familiar but different movement of playing hide-and-go-seek.

Personification Examples

Examples of personification in literature.

Writers use personification to create startling or whimsical visual images, which help to make the world of a book or poem all the more vivid in a reader's imagination. Often, authors use personification to describe the hidden lives of objects as a way of calling the reader's attention to the underlying mood, conflicts, or themes of the novel—of which even the characters themselves may not be fully aware.

Personification in Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse

To the Lighthouse takes place in a summer house on the Isle of Skye, off the coast of Scotland. Part 1 of the book describes an eventful summer that the family spends in the house, while Part 2, "Time Passes," describes the passage of the seasons when the family is away from the house. In this example from Part 2, Chapter 2, Woolf describes the summer house in the family's absence:

Nothing stirred in the drawing-room or in the dining-room or on the staircase. Only through the rusty hinges and swollen sea-moistened woodwork certain airs, detached from the body of the wind (the house was ramshackle after all) crept round corners and ventured indoors. Almost one might imagine them, as they entered the drawing-room questioning and wondering, toying with the flap of hanging wall-paper, asking, would it hang much longer, when would it fall? Then smoothly brushing the walls, they passed on musingly as if asking the red and yellow roses on the wall-paper whether they would fade, and questioning (gently, for there was time at their disposal) the torn letters in the waste-paper basket, the flowers, the books, all of which were now open to them and asking, Were they allies? Were they enemies? How long would they endure?

In this passage, Woolf personifies the wind by describing it as though it were a person who, "questioning and wondering," ventures through rooms and creeps around corners, inspecting the family's possessions and "toying with" them. Woolf could easily have written a more straightforward description of the house and the items within it. However, through the use of personification she allows the reader to identify with the wind, and in doing so to discover or "venture into" the empty house as the wind does here, "musingly" and curiously.

Personification in Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea

The Old Man and the Sea is the story of an unlucky fisherman named Santiago. Santiago has been unable to catch a fish for 84 days, but on the 85th day catches the biggest marlin he has ever seen. Then, on the 86th day, he catches a dolphin (a type of fish; not the ocean mammal) for dinner:

Just before it was dark, as they passed a great island of Sargasso weed that heaved and swung in the light sea as though the ocean were making love with something under a yellow blanket, his small line was taken by a dolphin.

Hemingway's personification of the ocean as "making love" both captures the rolling nature of the waves and also speaks to the fact that, after his change of luck, Santiago once again sees the ocean as a "partner" full of vitality and teeming with life.

Personification in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet

In the following passage from Act 2, Scene 2 of Romeo and Juliet , Romeo sneaks into Juliet's garden and catches a glimpse of her on her balcony:

But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun. Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon, Who is already sick and pale with grief, That thou, her maid, art far more fair than she. Be not her maid, since she is envious; Her vestal livery is but sick and green And none but fools do wear it; cast it off.

Romeo compares Juliet to the sun, and describes the moon as being envious of Juliet's beauty. Romeo's description of the moon as being female—in addition to its having feelings of envy, sickness, and grief—is an example of personification. When he pleads with Juliet, "Be not her maid," he's not only referring to the "jealous moon"—he's also making subtle reference to Diana, the goddess of the moon and virginity (whose devotees wore green). Thus, personifying the moon allows Romeo not only to express his wonder at Juliet's "celestial" beauty, but also to communicate his hope that Juliet isn't too chaste to get involved him.

Personification in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter

In Chapter 1 of The Scarlet Letter , Hawthorne describes a wild rose bush that grows in front of Salem's gloomy wooden jail:

But, on one side of the portal, and rooted almost at the threshold, was a wild rose-bush, covered, in this month of June, with its delicate gems, which might be imagined to offer their fragrance and fragile beauty to the prisoner as he went in, and to the condemned criminal as he came forth to his doom, in token that the deep heart of Nature could pity and be kind to him.

In the context of the novel's setting in 17th century Boston, this rose bush, which grows wild in front of an establishment dedicated to enforcing harsh puritan values, symbolizes those elements of human nature that cannot be repressed, no matter how strict a community's moral code may be: desire, fertility, and a love of beauty. By personifying the rosebush as "offering" its blossoms to reflect Nature's pity (Nature is also personified here as having a "heart"), Hawthorne turns the passive coincidence of the rosebush's location into an image of human nature actively resisting its constraints.

Examples of Personification in Music

Musicians often use personification in their lyrics for the same type of poetic effect that the technique can have in a literary context. However, the musicians who wrote the following songs don’t just give non-human entities human attributes, but actually describe the entities as complete people. This more comprehensive, figurative transformation of a thing—in the case of the following examples, a city or a drug—into a person allows the musicians to partially hide the true identity of what the song describes. In some cases, the musician may want to hide the meaning in order to play with language and with the listener’s expectations. In others, the musician may do so in order to share an experience that isn’t appropriate for a general audience.

Personification in Kanye West's "Homecoming"

"Homecoming" ( Graduation, 2007) is Kanye's ode to his hometown of Chicago, where he moved at the age of three. Instead of praising Chicago directly, West personifies the city by singing about it as though it were a girl named "Windy"—a reference to Chicago's nickname, "The Windy City":

I met this girl when I was 3 years old And what I loved most, she had so much soul She said, "Excuse me, lil homie, I know you don't know me But my name is Windy and I like to blow trees"... And when I grew up, she showed me how to go downtown In the nighttime her face lit up, so astoundin' I told her in my heart is where she'll always be She never messed with entertainers cause they always leave She said, "It felt like they walked and drop on me"

Through the use of personification, Kanye creates an enjoyable experience of discovery for the listener, who may in fact believe that the song is about a real girl named Windy until he or she listens more closely to the lyrics. In this case, the use of personification adds a whole new dimension to the song.

Personification in The Beatles' "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"

Though there is some debate as to the lyrics’ true meaning, “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” ( Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band, 1967) is widely perceived as a coded reference to LSD: a psychedelic drug that The Beatles experimented with around the time they wrote this song. Assuming that “ L ucy in the S ky with D iamonds” does in fact refer to LSD, it’s an excellent example of personification:

Picture yourself in a boat on a river With tangerine trees and marmalade skies Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly A girl with kaleidoscope eyes Cellophane flowers of yellow and green Towering over your head Look for the girl with the sun in her eyes And she's gone Lucy in the sky with diamonds Lucy in the sky with diamonds Lucy in the sky with diamonds Ahhh

Personification allows the Beatles to describe their LSD-induced hallucinations—which, they asserted openly, were important to their creative process—in a veiled way, so that only listeners who were clued into that particular drug culture could detect the reference.

Why Do Writers Use Personification?

Writers use personification to create memorable images with language, allowing readers to experience works of literature more vividly. Depending on the text, however, a writer may have a more specific purpose for using personification. Consider Bluets, by Maggie Nelson, a book made up of short, numbered vignettes in which the author conducts a poetic form of "field research" on her love for the color blue. In the following lines, Nelson wonders if the color blue can help her combat feelings of loss after a recent break-up:

71. I have been trying, for some time now, to find dignity in my loneliness. I have been finding this hard to do. 72. It is easier, of course, to find dignity in one's solitude. Loneliness is solitude with a problem. Can blue solve the problem, or can it at least keep me company within it? —No, not exactly. It cannot love me that way; it has no arms. But sometimes I do feel its presence to be a sort of wink— Here you are again, it says, and so am I.

Here, Nelson uses the technique of literary personification to accomplish something she wishes she could do in real life: replace her love for her former partner with her love for the color blue. She acknowledges that a reciprocal love between herself and blue is impossible in reality—"blue" is incapable of "keeping [her] company" because "it has no arms," or isn't human. However, immediately after this acknowledgement she personifies blue, writing that she sometimes feels its presence as a "wink" of acknowledgement. Thus, Nelson uses literary personification to make blue acknowledge her in her writing, as in reality only another lover or person can.

Other Helpful Personification Resources

• The Wikipedia Page on Personification: A straightforward explanation with examples.
• The Dictionary Definition of Personification: A basic definition and history of the term. The word personification was first used in the mid 1700s.
• An entertaining video collage about the difference between anthropomorphism and personification.
• A recording of the Beatles rehearsing "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds."

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Personification

What is personification.

Table of Contents

Easy Examples of Personification

Real-life examples of personification, personification creates a metaphor, why personification is important.

• The door complained as it opened.
• The cacti salute you as you drive into the desert.
• The sun kissed the ocean.
• Lee could hear the kebab beckoning .
• Fame creeps up on you. (Actor Ian Mckellen)
• Don't worry about avoiding temptation. As you grow older, temptation avoids you. (Actress Joey Adams)
• I like writing about the evil lurking in apparently good people. (Author Ethan Canin)
• Silence speaks so much louder than screaming tantrums. (Singer Taylor Swift)
• A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes . (Preacher Charles Spurgeon)
• I was born poor and without religion, under a happy sky , feeling harmony, not hostility, in nature. (Philosopher Albert Camus)
• Love is blind . (Poet Geoffrey Chaucer)
• The sea was angry that day. (George Costanza from the sitcom Seinfeld)
• The great weight of the ship may indeed prevent her from acquiring her greatest velocity; but when she has attained it, she will advance by her own intrinsic motion, without gaining any new degree of velocity, or lessening what she has acquired. (Poet William Falconer)
• John is a star.
• The avalanche is stalking you.
• The ivy hugged the regal oak .
• The ivy throttled the regal oak .

(Point 1) You can use quotation marks to highlight personification. Don't though.

• These waves "know" when you're not holding on.

(Point 2) You can use a capital letter for a season that is personified. Don't though.

• It was an effect created by Autumn's golden touch .

(Point 3) You can use "personify" to describe things.

• She is beauty personified.
• Tony Blair personified the shift away from democracy, towards control by bankers. (Broadcaster Max Keiser)
• The Rolls-Royce Phantom personifies everything about luxury motoring.
• If you need an interesting and efficient way to describe something non-human, consider personification's talents. (Your readers will easily identify with a human trait and any connotations it carries.)

This page was written by Craig Shrives .

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• Literary Terms
• Personification
• Definition & Examples
• When & How to Write a Personification

I. What is Personification?

Sometimes the sun smiles, the wind whispers to the trees, and the shadows of the leaves dance in the wind.

Although literally, the sun cannot smile, the leaves cannot dance without legs, and the wind cannot whisper because it doesn’t have a mouth, we apply human characteristics and create these metaphors to describe a scene. When we talk about non-human things as if they were human, we personify them.  Personification is a kind of metaphor in which you describe an inanimate object, abstract thing, or non-human animal in human terms. It is used to create more interesting and engaging scenes or characters .

II. Examples of Personification

Personification is very common in both literature and everyday speech. Here are a few common examples of personification:

1. Science-fiction novels were his constant companions.

Only a person or animal can literally be a ‘companion’; books are just objects. But this personification tells us that the books meant a lot to him, like close friends, and probably brought him happiness, like friends would.

The tired old car coughed and weezed and crawled down the street.

This sort of description, common in literature, uses several human qualities to create a vivid image of a very old car for the reader.

That piece of chocolate cake is calling my name.

Chocolate cake doesn’t have the ability to call after someone, but this  cliché uses personification to express the feeling of desire and hunger; we say that whatever object we desire is “calling our name.”  Putting a character’s feelings into the objects around him or her is a very common technique in literature.

III. The Importance of Using Personification

Personification provides personality, energy, will, and emotion to an otherwise lifeless scene.

For example, “The sun rose” is a literal description. A more interesting description could be, “The sun stretched its golden arms, climbed above the mountains, and smiled down on us.” Giving the sun “golden arms” creates a vivid image of the sun’s rays and “climbed” makes the sun more like a person getting out of bed. “Smiled” gives you a positive feeling about the day. If the author wanted to convey a negative feeling, he or she could have said “the sun glared down at us angrily.”

Personification usually expresses characters ’ feelings, and gives more life to a scene.

IV. Examples of Personification in Literature

Personification energizes prose and poetry alike. For an example of personification in prose, read this excerpt from John Knowles’ A Separate Peace :

Peace had deserted Devon. Although not in the look of the campus and village; they retained much of their dreaming summer calm. Fall had barely touched the full splendor of the trees, and during the height of the day the sun briefly regained its summertime power . In the air there was only an edge of coolness to imply the coming winter. But all had been caught up, like the first fallen leaves, by a new and energetic wind .

In this example, peace, an abstract idea, can desert a place. Also, the campus and village dream and the fall touches the trees.

Death is the mother of Beauty – from “Sunday Morning” by Wallace Stevens

This example shows that personification can be used for purposes more meaningful than merely making the description of a scene more vivid. After all, how can death be a person, let alone a mother?

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune – from Hamlet by William Shakespeare

In this famous line from Hamlet , “fortune” – a random event in life that is beyond our control — is described as “outrageous” and as shooting arrows and stones (from a sling) – which describe both how it can feel, and points out that it can really hurt you!

V. Personification in Pop Culture

Personification is a prominent feature of animated films and commercials alike. Personified animals can be fun and dynamic as well as cute and cuddly. Here are a few instances of personification in pop culture:

The Geico Gecko

In this anthropomorphism (which is extended personification, see Related Terms ) the lizard stands upright, uses hand motions, laughs, and speaks with a Cockney accent. This makes people relate to the mascot, which makes them feel better about the product. The Geico Gecko is a strong example of successful personification in advertising.

The “Be Our Guest” Entourage

A charming French candlestick, dishes who sing and dance, an anxious clock with a moustache, synchronized diving spoons, a polite and matronly teapot, the list goes on! Beauty and the Beast is rich with personification, providing all sorts of household items with souls and personalities.

VI. Related Terms

• Anthropomorphism

Like personification, anthropomorphism is the giving of human characteristics to objects or animals. Anthropomorphism is a kind of personification in which animals or objects are described as if they really are people with abilities like talking, walking upright, and thinking critically. This is stronger than simple personification, which can be done with just a couple of words, such as “the angry sun.” Here is an example of simple personification versus anthropomorphism:

Personification:

The owl laughed with a “hoot-hoot!”

In this example, the owl has taken on one human attribute: it laughs.

Anthropomorphism:

The wise owl said to the confused frog, “I know why you are suffering and I can help you find your way.”

In this example, the owl has become a person, with fully human abilities to think and talk.

List of Terms

• Alliteration
• Amplification
• Anachronism
• Antonomasia
• APA Citation
• Aposiopesis
• Autobiography
• Bildungsroman
• Characterization
• Circumlocution
• Cliffhanger
• Comic Relief
• Connotation
• Deus ex machina
• Deuteragonist
• Doppelganger
• Double Entendre
• Dramatic irony
• Equivocation
• Extended Metaphor
• Figures of Speech
• Flash-forward
• Foreshadowing
• Intertextuality
• Juxtaposition
• Literary Device
• Malapropism
• Onomatopoeia
• Parallelism
• Pathetic Fallacy
• Point of View
• Polysyndeton
• Protagonist
• Red Herring
• Rhetorical Device
• Rhetorical Question
• Science Fiction
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
• Synesthesia
• Turning Point
• Understatement
• Urban Legend
• Verisimilitude
• Essay Guide
• Cite This Website

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PERSONIFICATION - FIGURE OF SPEECH: WORKSHEETS WITH ANSWERS

Subject: English

Age range: 7-11

Resource type: Worksheet/Activity

Last updated

15 November 2021

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These Worksheets with Answers are perfect for teaching Figure of Speech - Personification. These no prep activities would be great for ELA lessons or ELA centers. Your students will love these exercises that are carefully planned for student engagement.

After attempting these New Bloom’s Taxonomy-based activities students will be able to:

• Identify the human characteristics ascribed to non-human entities in a given text.
• Define personification and state its impact on the reader.
• Show examples of writing that allow readers to personify non-human entities.
• Interpret a given text and identify the examples of personification.
• Evaluate a text and explain how personification is used in it.
• Help readers relate to non-human elements through writing and help make it more active.

This Download Includes:

• EXERCISE 1: Identify the human characteristics given to the non-human entities (specific and non-specific) in the following sentences.
• EXERCISE 2: Identify the human traits (specific and general) given to non-human entities in the following sentences.
• EXERCISE 3: Watch the video – Personification (Literary Device) – and answer the following questions.
• EXERCISE 4: Identify a characteristic or an action of a human in the following pictures – Part 1-2.
• EXERCISE 5: Identify what is personified in these pictures and mention the human characteristic given to no-humans things.
• EXERCISE 6: Personification in Advertising: What is personified and how? – Part 1-2
• EXERCISE 7: Give a human characteristic to a non-human thing as shown in the pictures.
• EXERCISE 8: Test your understanding of personification.
• EXERCISE 9: Answer the following questions to check your understanding of personification.
• EXERCISE 10: Take this test to test your knowledge of using personification.
• EXERCISE 11: Follow PEE (Point-Evidence-Explain) model to evaluate the poet’s use of personification in the poem.
• EXERCISE 12: Follow the PEEL model to explain the reader impact of the use of personification in the poem.
• EXERCISE 13: Attempt any one of the following to demonstrate your understanding of personification in writing.
• EXERCISE 14: Identify the word that is a characteristic or an action of a human.
• EXERCISE 15: Fill in the blanks with examples of personification.
• EXERCISE 16: Identify which part of the phrase is the personification.
• EXERCISE 17: Identify the word or phrase that is used to personify. State what is personified and how.
• EXERCISE 18: Imagine “Winter” as a person knocking at the door and write a poem.

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FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE WORKSHEETS WITH ANSWERS BUNDLE

This bundle of 10 products (Worksheets with Answers) is perfect for teaching Figures of Speech - Simile, Metaphor, Hyperbole, Analogy, Personification, Sensory Imagery, Irony, Synecdoche, Metonymy, Alliteration, Onomatopoeia, Repetition, Rhyme and Idioms. These no prep activities would be great for ELA lessons or ELA centers. Your students will love these exercises that are planned for student engagement. After completing these lessons, the students will be able to: * Define various figures of speech with examples. * Compare and contrast various figures of speech. * Examine the examples of various figures of speech to identify their meaning. * Interpret a given text and identify the examples of various figures of speech. * Evaluate a text and explain how various figures of speech have impact on the reader. * Use figures of speech to make writing poetic and to express creatively and concisely. This bundle includes Worksheets on: * Rhetorical Comparison Devices: 23 Exercises * Rhetorical Sound Devices: 35 Exercises * Sensory Imagery – Word Images: 17 Exercises * Personification – Figure of Speech: 18 Exercises * Irony Types – Verbal, Situational, Dramatic: 20 Exercises * Synecdoche vs Metonymy: 27 Exercises * Oxymoron: 22 Exercises * Idioms: 15 Exercises * Elegy: 8 Exercises * Metaphor: 22 Exercises * Simile: 28 Exercises Here are some other possible uses for these in your classroom: * To challenge early finishers * For effective tutoring * As ESL stations and sub tubs * As holiday work and homework * For small group collaborations * For an end of unit assessments * For reinforcement and enrichment ◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈ Save 50% on this BUNDLE! Note: These are also sold separately! ◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈

PERSONIFICATION - FIGURE OF SPEECH: BUNDLE

These bundled resources are perfect for teaching Figure of Speech - Personification. These no prep activities would be great for English lessons or English centers. Your students will love these ELA Boom Cards, Google Slides, PPT, Unit Plan, Worksheets and Scaffolding Notes. After completing this unit students will be able to: * Identify the human characteristics ascribed to non-human entities in a given text. * Define personification and state its impact on the reader. * Show examples of writing that allow readers to personify non-human entities. * Interpret a given text and identify the examples of personification. * Evaluate a text and explain how personification is used in it. * Help readers relate to non-human elements through writing and help make it more active. This download includes: * Boom Cards: 32 Digital Task Cards * Unit Lesson Plan: 21 Pages * Scaffolding Notes: 5 Handouts * Worksheets with Answers: 18 Exercises * PowerPoint Presentation: 22 Slides * Google Slides: 22 Slides Here are some possible uses for these in your classroom: * To challenge early finishers * For effective tutoring * As ESL stations and sub tubs * As holiday work and homework * For small group collaborations * For an end of unit assessments * For reinforcement and enrichment ◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈ Save 30% on this BUNDLE! Note: These are also sold separately! ◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈◈

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Personification Examples to Make Your Writing More Interesting

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Like other forms of figurative language, personification can make your writing more dynamic. By giving human qualities to inanimate objects, you can uniquely describe situations that will resonate with your reader.

Read on to learn more about the literary device through personification examples .

What Is Personification?

Why use personification in your writing, 5 personification examples, famous examples of personification.

Personification is a literary device that gives human traits and emotions to nonhumans, like animals, objects or an abstract idea. It's more common to use personification in creative writing than in other types of writing, such as medical or business contexts.

According to Merriam-Webster , human beings have long used personification:

Personification vs. Anthropomorphism

Personification is not the same as anthropomorphism, which is the literary technique of portraying animals, plants or objects behaving like humans.

You can see an example of anthropomorphism in "Fantastic Mr. Fox," a movie in which animals talk, wear clothes and plan elaborate schemes just as the human characters do.

Giving objects or animals human emotions can help the reader form emotional connections to nonhuman figures. As with other literary devices, personification can also help paint a more vivid picture of a scene or make abstract ideas more accessible.

Charles Dickens, who employed personification regularly, saw these human attributes in everyday life. "This is a lesson taught us in the great book of nature," he said .

"This is the lesson which may be read, alike in the bright track of the stars, and in the dusty course of the poorest thin that drags its tiny length upon the ground. This is the lesson ever uppermost in the thoughts of that inspired man, who tells us that there are Tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in everything."

Lastly, personification can make your writing more engaging, especially if you give unexpected human characteristics to an inanimate object.

Here are a few examples of personification.

• Talking about the strength of the wind : As the rain died down, the wind only whispered.
• Explaining how loud your alarm clock was : The alarm clock shouted at me, jolting me awake.
• Describing the flickering of a candle : The candle flame danced a lively polka.
• Showing that you use your running shoes a lot : The shoes, tired from weeks of preparation, carried me to the finish line.
• Demonstrating the size of a mountain : The mountains stood tall, inspiring fear in the hikers.

Authors regularly use personification in their works. Here are a few famous examples.

From "The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood

From "a christmas carol" by charles dickens, from "the giving tree" by shel silverstein.

Please copy/paste the following text to properly cite this HowStuffWorks.com article:

180+ Personification Examples on 25+ Topics

• Figurative Language
• Updated on Nov 12, 2023

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Personification is a figure of speech that gives human characteristics to non-humans (plants, animals, and inanimate objects) and abstractions (sadness, anger, etc.) to create striking visual images for the readers. It makes your writing livelier and concrete.

Few examples of personification:

Empty streets during lockdowns missed the usual hustle & bustle.

The oasis said goodbye to the departing caravan and welcomed the next.

(Personifications have been underlined in all the examples for ease of following.)

In the first example, streets display a human characteristic: missing something. In the second example, oasis displays human characteristics: saying goodbye and welcoming.

Note that personification is a figure of speech and shouldn’t be taken literally. So, the streets actually didn’t miss anything and the oasis didn’t say goodbye to or welcomed anyone. In the given context, they’ve been given these human characteristics to make our writing livelier and concrete.

More resources on personification:

• What is personification and how to write one step-by-step?
• Exercises on personification

Let’s dive into examples, which have been arranged topically.

While going through these examples, note the key words that have been underlined. Think for a moment if these key words lend human characteristic to non-humans and abstractions. That’s the qualification for personification.

The monkeys brawled over the banana.

Chocolate frog, a new species of frog found, has been shying away from mankind for time immemorial.

Simba’s hair from the mane travelled for days before being found by Rafiki.

Salivating at the thought of evening feast, the cheetah looked far and wide from atop the mound for prey.

The hyena bullied the leopard and stole his kill.

2. Birds and insects

The peacock danced , mesmerizing the onlookers.

The birds welcomed the spring by singing melodious tunes.

The bee, trapped in the room, pleaded for the window to be opened.

The bees had fun and frolic while jaunting around from flower to flower.

The engine roared and the car went off like a bullet.

The car was bruised after brushing against the hedge.

The electric car decried the environment unfriendliness of the nearby petrol car.

The yellow Lamborghini beckoned me to take the driver’s seat and flee.

The new swanky model of the sports car was blissfully unaware of the admirers looking at it.

After the long journey, the car rested in the garage to get ready for the next day’s journey.

After six hours of drive, the car gasped for fuel.

After non-stop drive for six hours, the car begged the driver to stop.

Wheezing and coughing , the old car demanded rest and service.

The moody clouds came back unannounced, threatening a downpour.

The furious clouds brought a downpour that waterlogged the city and swept away vehicles.

It has rained more heavily this year. It seems clouds are sharing the grief humankind has suffered because of Covid-19.

The clouds clashed vigorously, producing rain and thunder.

Sometimes I wonder if the clouds have bladder control problem .

The clouds roared , threatening to wash out today’s match.

In our organization, we let different ideas jostle with each other, and the best find their way into products.

The company carpet-bombed television and digital media with advertisements.

The revenue growth has now stubbornly remained below 10% for the last six quarters.

The new product flew off the shelves.

6. Covid-19

Covid-19 stalked continent after continent with no remorse .

Delta variant drove away other variants to become the most dominant variant of Covid virus.

Birds and animals living close to cities couldn’t believe the tranquility they got during the lockdowns.

The vaccine eagerly awaited people, but not everyone reciprocated the feeling.

In the initial months, the pandemic forced people to postpone their travel plans, grounding several flights.

Economies after economies screeched to a halt because of restrictions and unwillingness of people to spend.

Hospitals across the world were overwhelmed with flood of critical patients.

The virus proved wrong the theories such as its ineffectiveness in warmer climates and against certain populations.

The angry cactus stabbed anyone who touched it.

The tall cactus stood lonely, watching passersby every day.

The sand, fried by the sun, has been awaiting arrival of the elusive caravan.

The caravan ploughed through the desert, giving company to plants and animals wherever it passed through.

The parched shrubs looked expectantly toward the sky for slightest of rain but in vain.

The bald sand dunes stood tall and emphatic.

The oasis fought hard to preserve the precious water from evaporating.

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I couldn’t resist when the cake begged to be eaten.

Fennel seeds and chillies danced in the hot oil in the pan.

This coffee is so strong that it can get up and walk away .

The waffle sprang out of the toaster to startle me.

The ice cubes cackled when I poured soda in the glass.

The pizza looked forward to meet his friends, sauce and condiments.

Despite several requests from my stuffed stomach, my mouth didn’t stop eating.

The airtight container suffocated the dough I had put in there.

The forest welcomed the rain after a long dry summer that parched the region.

The Australian wildfire devoured thousands of hectares of forests, fields, and anything else that came its way.

After the sunset, the animals came out of their shelter, bringing the forest to life .

With the arrival of rains, the seeds on the forest floor sprang up to life.

The forest gave shelter and food to innumerable birds and animals without demanding much in return.

10. Gadgets and appliances

The kettle hissed and bellowed steam.

I had to finally switch off the fan which threatened to blow me away.

On restart, the modem blinked with red, followed by green, light.

The washing machine jolted and swirled the clothes vigorously.

The toaster spitted out the bread slices.

I could hear the saxophone playing a melodious tune from the other room.

My mobile phone awoke with a loud ring.

The mixer shrieked and whistled every time it mixed and chopped things.

The vacuum cleaner hummed a pleasant tune as it went around cleaning the floor.

The lawnmower, with an unending appetite for grass, trimmed the entire lawn in 30 minutes.

11. Graveyard

Slithering snakes, roaming mice, and creeping centipedes added flavor to the eerie atmosphere at the graveyard.

The winter fog settled on the graveyard, camouflaging spirits in its white hue.

Dark clouds and full moon looked down at the mist covering the graves.

Suddenly a hand emerged from one of the graves and stood straight pointing towards the moon.

At the howl of the dog, the skeleton turned in its grave.

Every day, death carried someone in its icy hands to the cemetery.

An eerie silence gripped the graveyard in the night.

The wind ran wild in the graveyard, carrying the stench of death and message of impermanence.

12. Happiness

My father’s heart swelled at my podium finish.

My feet tap-danced in joy.

13. Haunted house

The high-mast light dutifully brightened the courtyard every night in an otherwise pitch-dark building.

Often found sitting in the courtyard, the street dog was the sole companion to the haunted house.

As I pushed open the door, it creaked, warning me of dangers awaiting.

The painting on the wall seemed to be telling a blood-stained story.

The man inside the haunted house froze as the spirit touched him with its icy hands .

The bats, hung upside down, seemed to be perfecting their gymnastic moves .

The cobwebs have been busy trapping the unsuspecting insects and flies.

With plenty of trapped insects, spiders have been partying around.

Sighing softly , the house settled for the night.

We bought this particular house because it is friendlier .

I can’t open the door because its hinges are uncooperative .

The house greeted me with a smile when I came back after the vacation.

With paint coming off and cobwebs gaining ground , the house was sad and withdrawn at its poor upkeep.

The house was clearly depressed when I said goodbye to move to a new place.

The house provided warm and cozy atmosphere to its new occupants.

15. Household items

The lock shrieked in pain as I rattled the wrong key in it.

I had become so overweight that even my slippers groaned in pain under my weight.

My alarm clock shouts at me every morning.

The broom swept the house clean.

The peas woke up from their hibernation when they were taken out of the freezer and thawed.

The laptop sprang to life with just a press of button.

The laptop was stressed due to fast-running-out storage space.

After four years of tireless work, my laptop now takes time to wake up and is ready to retire .

My laptop died before I could take backup.

The laptop was sick with viruses and requested the owner to install an anti-virus software.

The laptop was happy to be independent of charging cable for hours together, but the aging battery threatened this independence.

17. Mountain

The mountain has been spitting smoke and rocks for the last three days, displacing the entire town.

With plenty of hiking trails and ski slopes, the mountain provided for the people.

The mountain was helpless in stopping the destructive landslides and avalanches. Shouldn’t we take responsibility for them?

Rocky Mountains boasted of their old lineage.

The volcano burped and spewed ash and rocks, signaling that more is to come.

With the night descending, the darkness swallowed the sunlight.

The night lured us to venture out and enjoy the pleasant weather.

The street lights fought hard to dispel the darkness.

After the sun said goodbye, the night gleefully filled the ceded space.

The night wasn’t happy that anti-social elements committed crimes under the cover of darkness.

The rain, in foul mood , submerged large parts of the city, stranding people and damaging public goods.

The first rain of the season released aroma from the soil, inviting me to join the revelry .

The generous rainfall rained aplenty this year to bring cheer to the crops.

The rain cleansed the city of its dust and waste.

The rain nudged creatures such as frogs out of their hibernation, buzzing the nights with a cocktail of sounds.

The tough exam paper first waited expectantly for me to make some headway, and when I didn’t, it challenged me.

As the teacher began the lesson, silence crept into the classroom.

My heart sank as I received my grades.

My watch warned me that I was left with just ten minutes to finish my test.

By 1 AM, even my book was tired , and it asked me to go to bed.

The crime scene spilled the beans about the perpetrator of the crime.

The bell announced the end of our class.

The iceberg demolished Titanic’s boast of infallibility, converting it into a watery grave.

The sea cared for from the tiniest of plankton to the mightiest of blue whales.

As it struggled against the high waves, the ship protested the non-stop voyage.

The cargo ship got stuck in the Suez Canal, refusing to budge an inch.

The ocean swallowed Titanic alive and digested it slowly over decades.

The rocks on the beach enjoyed the sun tan.

The ball, after being hit hard, sailed over the boundary line and landed in the third tier of the stadium.

The football flew over the wall of defenders to hit the left corner of the goal post.

Mac swung the base hard, sending the ball screaming .

The footballers’ shoes, with their long spikes, were stabbing the ground ceaselessly.

The kite danced in the wind, trying its best to break free.

After its string snapped, the kite lurched drunkenly towards the waiting hands of people on the ground.

The trees fought hard to stand their ground in the storm, but only few succeeded .

My umbrella gave in to the winds, losing its shape and failing to protect me from the rain.

The stormy wind entered through the open window and ransacked the house.

The merciless hurricane uprooted trees and pummeled city’s infrastructure.

The hurricane’s fury took even the met department by surprise.

With sun-tanning in the park, cycling, surfing, hiking, and many other outdoor activities open, the summer bought several bounties for people.

After the long winter, the summer blessed us with its warmth.

The unforgiving summer heat sickened thousands of people.

Swimming pools across the city welcomed the summer as they looked forward to few months of prime time.

Soft drink ads bombarded all media in the weeks leading up to summer.

The sun got up early to drive the moon away.

The sun played hide-and-seek with the clouds.

The sun, peeking from behind the mountains, greeted me wholeheartedly as I stepped out of my resort.

The sun finished its day’s work , going under the horizon with a majestic twilight all around.

The animals were ecstatic when the sun finally embraced the arctic after months.

26. Trees and plants

The wilting plant begged for water.

The flower turned its face to the sun.

The flowers dressed in resplendent colors as they wanted to make the most of few months of good weather.

The marigold flowers danced merrily in the gentle breeze.

The banyan tree has stood patiently outside the village for decades, providing shelter to hundreds of birds and shade to passers-by.

With some of its leaves shorn and branches snapped in the storm, the mango tree looked as if it had a haircut .

As spring approached, the trees changed their brown clothes to green .

The generous tree dropped mangoes for the people resting under its shade.

I surfed so smoothly. It seemed as if the waves laid down a path for me to walk.

Waves carried the surfers safely to the beach.

The waves calmed down , making it easy for the vacationers to venture deeper into the sea.

The furious wave lashed out at the boat, tossing it like a toy.

The wind howled at high speed, causing extensive damage to trees and dwellings.

The wind raced through the fields, flattening the crops.

The wind, blowing at high speed, bullied the kids into staying indoors.

The wind whistled through the city, bringing relief from the oppressive heat.

The wind’s soft touch on the warm summer day sent me dozing in no time.

You need more protection. It’s biting cold out there.

Cold stabbed me like a knife.

The chilly wind pierced our bodies like hundred needles.

The snow on the branches whispered to the leaves.

The accumulated ice ran down the sloping roof and fell with a thud on my car.

Winter swept the region, dipping the temperature to below freezing point.

The winter continued its relentless march and soon embraced the entire region.

The cars danced on the sleet-covered road.

The wintry blast sneaked through my clothes and chilled me to the bone.

My coat hugged me tight to protect me from cold.

By November, the winter had gripped the entire region with its icy hands .

Anil is the person behind content on this website, which is visited by 3,000,000+ learners every year. He writes on most aspects of English Language Skills. More about him here:

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Kids Personification

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It is common for humans to use expressions that give objects human qualities and emotions. Objects are incapable of talking and feeling like humans are, yet giving them life allows us to develop a better understanding of a given concept. Take a look at the simple sentence examples that are available online. These figurative expressions are referred to as personification.

• Personification Examples
• Apostrophe Examples

Just like man other types of figures of speech, such as hyperbole expressions , onomatopoeic words , etc., personification can be a bit more complex for younger children to understand and comprehend. For the proper use of this literary device, a complete and thorough understanding of how personification works are essential. Since it is used in both literature and daily life, one must understand how it is used.

What Is Personification?

A personification is a form of figurative language used to give objects or ideas human-like abilities, qualities or characteristics. Think about it. Does your mother’s chocolate chip cookies ever ‘tempt’ you to take a bite of it? Does your homework ever ‘hide’ from you whenever you need it? The best way to determine whether or not personification is applied is to examine the statement, and then ask yourself if it is something that a human being is more likely to do. You may also see transitional phrases and sentences . This literary device helps make statements, stories or poems sound more interesting and descriptive to the people reading them. By bringing non-human objects to life, it makes it a lot easier for authors to carry out their message.

Let’s take this for example:

• My alarm clock yells at me every morning.

Imagine your alarm clock yelling at you like your mom does when you’re running late for school. While an alarm clock may have its pair of hands to tell time, it doesn’t have a mouth nor a voice to make an actual sound. You may also like sentence fragments . An alarm clock is simply an inanimate object used to warn us of a particular time of day, so it can’t execute human actions (unless we’re talking about Cogsworth the clock from Beauty and the Beast, but that’s another story).

In most of the cases, personification is mainly taught to younger children through the concept of poetry. This is because simple poems, nursery rhymes, riddles, etc, are easier to understand and grasp. They have a smooth flow and are a natural tone of words. Teachers and parents can use these narratives to introduce the concept of personification to students properly. Imperative sentence examples can also be of great help to you.

“Hey, diddle, diddle, The cat and the fiddle, The cow jumped over the moon; The little dog laughed To see such sport, And the dish ran away with the spoon.”

—  Hey Diddle, Diddle by Mother Goose

The example that is given above is a nursery rhyme that is filled with personification. Although we like to believe that animals are capable of feeling and executing human emotions, it’s unlikely to witness a laughing dog in real life. You may also see run-on sentences . A dish and a spoon can’t move on its own, either, let alone run away. Also, have you ever witnessed a cat play the fiddle in real life?

“I’d love to take a poem to lunch or treat it to a wholesome brunch of fresh-cut fruit and apple crunch. I’d spread it neatly on the cloth beside a bowl of chicken broth and watch a mug of root beer froth.”

—  Take a Poem to Lunch  by Denise Rodgers

Here, the author simply personifies a poem. To the speaker, the poem is something he or she could take out for lunch or brunch while enjoying a scrumptious meal together. Although it may seem like a humorous thought to consider in the real world, there is a deeper meaning within the text that the poet is trying to get across. You may also see exclamatory sentence examples .

And because the level of one’s understanding is bound to develop over time, students are likely to be greeted with more complex writings incorporated with personification such as the one below:

“To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, And still more, later flowers for the bees, Until they think warm days will never cease, For summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells”

—  To Autumn by John Keats

This poem personifies the Autumn season as an actual human person. The changes that happen to an individual during the season can be depicted in the poem. This way perhaps, the author captures the moments of the season as if it is Mother Nature spreading her magic around. Compound sentence examples  can be used to make the best compound sentences needed so that the language is easily understandable.

Common Personification Examples

The use of personification goes beyond just English poetry and literature, and also, it is pretty evident in our everyday language. Sometimes, you may have used these lines many a time before, but because of how regularly it is applied in our everyday language we speak and goes unnoticed. Listed below are thirty examples of personification used in normal conversations: You may also see the interrogative sentence .

• The sun is playing hide and seek with the clouds today.
• Your flowers look like they’re begging for water.
• The cacti in the dessert salute every single car that drives by.
• The wildfire ran far and wide across the forest in a matter of minutes.
• His book just flew off the shelves within a week of its release.
• The tornado devoured everything that stood in its way.
• I look so good in these pictures, I guess the camera just loves me.
• Time flew faster than I expected.
• Love is blind, and at times, crazy.
• I spend my nights talking to the moon about you.
• The trees danced to the rhythm of the wind.
• They call Las Vegas the city that never sleeps.
• You can kiss your freedom goodbye.
• The party died as soon as somebody broke the glass door.
• Fel heard the cake calling his name from inside the refrigerator.
• Thunder grumbled as we reached the shoreline.
• The trust I had in you just walked out that door.
• What she saw made the love she had for him die.
• The raindrops rest idly on top of my car.
• This competitive industry would chew you up and spit you out in no time.
• My dad’s car danced on the wet road.
• This toy has a mind of its own.
• The pen wrote down those words effortlessly.
• The tree whispered silently to the wind.
• I see the stars wink at me every night.
• The silence crept into the classroom as soon as the teacher entered.
• I’m so nervous, I could feel my heart jumping out my chest.
• The angry storm keeps pounding our thin roof.
• I think the weather doesn’t like me today.
• I saw your headlights wink at me the other day.

Apart from literature and daily speech, personification may also be used in advertising. It’s a fun way to entice customers with expressions that are sensible, yet relatively peculiar. Personification, like the other literary devices used, adds more color in ways that allow the mind to dawdle. You may also see complete and incomplete sentences . It’s imaginative enough to make you stop and think about the picture portrayed in the narrative, and it’s creative enough to turn a dull piece of writing into something enthralling.

Text prompt

• Instructive
• Professional

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