Meaning of persona in English

persona

/pɚˈsoʊ.nə/ uk

/pəˈsəʊ.nə/

plural personae us/pɚˈsoʊ.niː/ uk/pəˈsəʊ.niː/ personas

the particular type of character that a person seems to have and that is often different from their real or private character:

He had a shy, retiring side to his personality that was completely at odds with his public persona.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Mind and personality

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You can also find related words, phrases, and synonyms in the topics:

Seeming and purporting to be

(Definition of persona from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press)

persona | Intermediate English

persona

noun [ C ]

/pərˈsoʊ·nə/

plural personas or personae us/pərˈsoʊ·ni/

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the particular type of character that a person seems to have, which is often different from the real or private character that person has:

the senator’s public persona

literature

A persona is also the voice in which an author writes a story or poem

(Definition of persona from the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

Examples of persona

persona

But as a stay-at-home mom, it's even harder to maintain a persona and life of your own.

From Huffington Post

His parents see the makings of his persona in his youth.

From CNN

She is rising back into a powerful persona.

From Hollywood Reporter

On the whole, big and flashy isn't a problem for an attractive brunette whose persona relies on cartoonish oversaturation.

From NPR

His outsize chancellery was part of his larger-than-life persona.

From Bloomberg

How did you craft the screen persona, and what did you focus on while acting?

From Hollywood Reporter

His most important deception is the one at the core of his persona.

From Slate Magazine

Self-critical, able to completely disassociate himself from his persona, his ego and everything else.

From The Atlantic

Celebrities craft for themselves a mediated persona -- good parent, wholesome boy or girl next door, vixen or bad boy -- through which they establish societal influence.

From TIME

They're cardboard cutouts, the personas they develop ever more elaborate and yet more predictable.

From NPR

Neither made overtly political films and instead ran campaigns based on the heroic personas they had cultivated in their film careers.

From The Atlantic

But he has worked to present a friendlier, more charming persona on the trail.

From CBS News

The same goes for authors whose personas are vilified on social media.

From The New Yorker

When authors tweet -- and most publishers urge them to do so -- the line between work and persona can become almost impossible to draw.

From The New Yorker

When asked how her persona on stage compares to her persona at home, she noted a difference.

From Huffington Post

These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.

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