Personification examples

Give an object, idea or figure a clearly human action, feeling or role.

About Personification Start lesson

Featured example

Guilt rode the bus home with me and would not stop talking.

Human actions: guilt travels along and talks

Someone describes the journey home after missing a friend’s party.

Why it works

Guilt, a feeling, is given a person’s actions: traveling beside someone and talking the whole way.

In plain words: The speaker kept feeling guilty all the way home.

More personification examples

The alarm clock nagged me through three attempts to go back to sleep.
- Human behavior: the alarm clock nags
Someone describes repeated morning alarms.
Why it works
A clock is given the human behavior of nagging.
Winter packed its bags when the first buds appeared.
- Human action: winter packs to leave
A gardener describes the change of seasons.
Why it works
The season is treated as a person preparing to leave.
Our waiting lists have run out of patience, and so have the families on them.
- Human feeling: the waiting lists lose patience
A volunteer speaking at a town meeting about long waits for help.
Why it works
Patience is a human quality. Giving it to the waiting lists makes the problem feel urgent, then the line turns to the real people affected.
Like a lonely old neighbor, the bandstand in the park keeps hoping someone will visit.
- Human feeling: the bandstand hopes like a lonely neighbor
A resident asks the town council to repair the park’s old bandstand.
Why it works
The bandstand is compared with a lonely neighbor and given a human hope, so a simile and personification work together to make its neglect feel sad and worth fixing.
Our heating bill has become the greediest member of this club.
- Human role: the bill is the greediest member
The treasurer argues for a new boiler at the club’s yearly meeting.
Why it works
A club member is a person, and greed is a human failing. Calling the bill the greediest member makes the cost feel personal, which helps the case for a new boiler.

Easy to confuse

The neighbor complained about the noise.
A resident describes a real conversation.
What to notice
Complaining is a literal action by a human subject, not a human quality given to something non-human.
The dog barked at the delivery van.
Someone observes an animal’s ordinary behavior.
What to notice
Barking is a normal dog action, not an attributed human role.
The idea was a stepping stone to the final plan.
A colleague describes how an early suggestion helped.
What to notice
The metaphor gives an idea an object’s role, not a human quality.
The sales figures rose for the third month running.
A manager reads out the monthly report.
What to notice
Figures really do rise and fall; that is the ordinary way to describe numbers. Nothing specifically human is given to them.