dispersonify

present singular third person dispersonifies · participle present dispersonifying · participle past dispersonified · past dispersonified

1. To view as impersonal; to see as an object rather than as having personal attributes.

   When even a stone was a cutter, a tooth a grinder, a gimlet a borer, the difficulty was not how to personify, but how to dispersonify.

   1899, Friedrich Max Müller, Collected Works, page 407

   3 more examples

   It is almost impossible for the most prosaic mind to dispersonify a ship. It requires a greater effort probably on the part of the Englishman to view a ship as an inanimate object than for the ancient Greek to dispersonify the sun or moon.

   1864, The Spectator - Volume 37, page 1363

   Along these lines we can approach a pure allegorical reading — pure in being univocal, not hybridized. In this reading predicates are construed so as radically to dispersonify their meanings.

   1981, Harvard English Studies - Volume 9, page 35

   With these shifts in point of view, Thomson makes body parts not only the objects or the means but also the subjects of personification, granting the eyes and ears of a bee or a hare the power to dispersonify humans.

   2016, Heather Keenleyside, Animals and Other People