Personification: 40 Examples and How to Use It in Writing

Personification is giving human qualities, actions or feelings to something that is not human: an animal, an object, a force of nature or an idea. “The wind howled”, “my alarm clock screamed at me” and “opportunity knocked” are all personification. Wind cannot howl in the human sense, clocks cannot scream, and opportunity has no hands, but each phrase makes the reader picture the thing behaving like a person.

Below are 40 everyday examples grouped by subject, six famous ones from literature with what each is doing, the difference between personification and its close relatives, and how to write it well. A short quiz with answers is at the end.

How to spot personification

Find the subject of the sentence and ask: is it a person? If not, look at the verb and the describing words around it. If they are words we normally save for people (whispered, danced, refused, lazy, jealous), you have personification.

• The leaves fell. Leaves really do fall. Literal.
• The leaves danced to the ground. Dancing is something people do on purpose. Personification.

Most of the work is usually done by a single verb. That is worth remembering when you write it yourself.

Everyday personification examples

Weather and nature

1. The wind howled all night.
2. The sun smiled down on the picnic.
3. Thunder grumbled in the distance.
4. The rain drummed its fingers on the roof.
5. Fog crept in from the harbour.
6. The waves crashed angrily against the rocks.
7. The flowers nodded in the breeze.
8. The old oak tree groaned under the snow.
9. The river swallowed the last of the light.
10. Lightning danced across the sky.

Weather is the most common home for personification, because storms and seas already seem to have moods. Our pages on weather metaphors and similes for wind have more along these lines.

Objects and machines

11. My alarm clock screamed at six.
12. The car coughed and refused to start.
13. The floorboards complained with every step.
14. My phone died halfway through the call.
15. The kettle sang on the stove.
16. The printer is being stubborn again.
17. The door groaned open.
18. The candle flame trembled.
19. The laptop sighed and shut itself down.
20. The last biscuit was calling my name.

Ideas and feelings

21. Opportunity knocked.
22. Fear gripped the crowd.
23. Justice is blind.
24. Jealousy whispered in his ear.
25. Hope refused to die.
26. Love is patient.
27. Guilt followed her everywhere.
28. Curiosity got the better of him.
29. Silence filled the room.
30. Panic took over.

Time, places and everything else

31. Time flies.
32. The deadline was breathing down our necks.
33. The city never sleeps.
34. The house watched us with dark windows.
35. History will judge us.
36. The morning crept by.
37. The road stretched lazily ahead.
38. The stars winked at us.
39. The garden was begging for water.
40. The mountain stood guard over the valley.

Notice how many of these have become ordinary speech. Nobody hearing “my phone died” or “time flies” thinks of a person. Personification that has gone this far into the language is sometimes called dead or conventional; it still counts, but it no longer creates a picture.

Personification in literature

Poets use personification to make abstract things concrete enough to feel. These six are all old enough to be in the public domain, and each one does something slightly different.

Emily Dickinson, “Because I could not stop for Death” opens: “Because I could not stop for Death – / He kindly stopped for me –”. Death is a polite gentleman caller who offers the speaker a carriage ride. Turning a frightening idea into a courteous person makes the poem calm and strange at the same time.

John Donne, Holy Sonnet 10 begins “Death, be not proud” and goes on arguing with Death as if it could hear. Addressing a personified idea directly like this is called apostrophe, and the two devices often travel together.

William Wordsworth, “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” describes daffodils “Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.” The flowers are given heads and a mood, so the field seems to share the speaker’s lifting spirits.

John Keats, “To Autumn” calls autumn the “Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun”, conspiring with it to ripen the fruit. Later in the poem autumn is seen sitting on a granary floor and sleeping in a half-reaped field: a whole season drawn as a person at work.

Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet: “Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon.” Romeo makes the moon jealous of Juliet’s beauty. It is personification inside a metaphor, since Juliet herself is the sun.

Carl Sandburg, “Fog”: “The fog comes / on little cat feet.” Here the fog takes on an animal’s qualities, not a human’s. Strictly, that is zoomorphism; many teachers treat it as personification in the wider sense, so check which definition your course uses.

For how personification sits beside simile, metaphor, hyperbole and the rest, see our guide to figurative language.

Personification vs metaphor, simile and anthropomorphism

The line between personification and metaphor is thin: personification is often described as a kind of metaphor, one where the hidden comparison is always “this thing is like a person”. The useful distinction is anthropomorphism. In personification the wind does not really howl; we just describe it that way. In anthropomorphism the rabbit really does talk, within the story. For more comparisons in the same family, see metaphors for nature and similes for nature.

How to write personification well

Let the verb carry it. “The wind howled” works because of one word. “The wind, like an angry person, made a loud sound” uses ten words and has less force. Choose a human verb that fits what the thing actually does: wind moves and makes noise, so howled, whispered or shoved all fit; wind read a book does not.

Match the human trait to the mood you want. “The sea slept” makes a calm scene; “the sea sulked” makes a grey, heavy one; “the sea lunged” makes a dangerous one. The same water, three different paragraphs.

One per scene is often enough. A room where the walls listen, the clock sneers, the chair waits and the window sighs is crowded. Pick the one that matters most.

Keep it consistent. If the storm is a furious person in one sentence, it should not become a playful puppy in the next unless the change is the point.

Watch the register. Personification suits stories, poems, speeches and persuasive writing. In a science report or a formal essay, “the cell wants nutrients” is usually better written as “the cell needs nutrients”.

Common mistakes

• Calling any description personification. “The angry man shouted” is not personification; the man is already human.
• Mixing it with a clashing metaphor. “Time, the thief, sang softly through the years” asks the reader to picture two incompatible things at once.
• Overusing dead examples. “Time flies” and “the wind howled” will not surprise anyone. In your own writing, look for the human action nobody has used for that thing yet.
• Labelling animal traits wrongly in an exam. Giving a thing an animal’s qualities (the engine purred) is often accepted as personification, but some mark schemes want “zoomorphism” or “metaphor”. Read the question’s definition.

Quiz: is it personification?

Decide whether each sentence contains personification. If it does, name the word that does the work.

1. The thunder roared over the hills.
2. The dog barked at the postman.
3. My bed was calling me.
4. She ran as fast as a cheetah.
5. The old car wheezed up the hill.
6. The waves were tall and grey.
7. The city slept under the snow.
8. Her eyes were stars.
9. Fear crept into his voice.
10. The cake was delicious.

Answers

1. Yes, roared (an animal or human sound; most teachers accept it as personification).
2. No. Dogs really bark.
3. Yes, calling.
4. No, it is a simile (as fast as).
5. Yes, wheezed, like a tired person short of breath.
6. No. Literal description.
7. Yes, slept.
8. No, it is a metaphor; the eyes are not given human behaviour, they are compared to stars.
9. Yes, crept; fear is given a body that moves quietly.
10. No. Literal description.

If you are writing about a particular subject, our collections of metaphors for death, metaphors for time and similes for rain include many lines built on the same move.