first person

American

[furst pur-suhn] / ˈfɜrst ˈpɜr sən /

noun

the grammatical person used by a speaker in statements referring to the speaker's own self first person singular or to a group including the speaker first person plural.
a pronoun or verb form in the first person, as I or am in English, or a set of such forms.
a literary style in which the narrative is told from the perspective of a narrator speaking directly.

The story is written in the first person.

first person British

noun

a grammatical category of pronouns and verbs used by the speaker to refer to or talk about himself or herself, either alone ( first person singular ) or together with others ( first person plural )

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Etymology

Origin of first person

First recorded in 1935–40

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

The elder Kwok became the first person to be convicted of this type of offence earlier this month in a case rights groups called an "alarming act of collective punishment".

From Barron's

“Not the first person this is going to happen to,” Carroll said.

From The Wall Street Journal

She posted a simple question, and her thank-you to the first person who answered was misconstrued as sarcastic.

From The Wall Street Journal

“If anyone was cooking the books, I would be one of the first persons shouting,” he said Monday.

From MarketWatch

“If anyone were cooking the books, I would be the first person to be shouting that there was a problem,” Wiatrowski said.

From The Wall Street Journal

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023