Personification in language and AI. Dictums, maxims, and proverbs. Expensitive.

Grammar Girl Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing

Mignon Fogarty, Inc.

Society & Culture, Education

4.5 • 2.9K Ratings

🗓️ 18 November 2025

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

1134. This week, we look at the poetic power of personification (the language quirk that gives human traits to nonhuman things) and why style guides advise against using it for AI. Then, we look at the different names for common sayings, defining a proverb and breaking down the four main types: maxim, adage, dictum, and truism.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Gramer Girl here. I'm in Jan Fogarty, your friendly guide to the English language.
0:10.3	Today, we're going to look at personification and then at the differences between things like axioms and maxims.
0:18.9	A few years back, Apple's Siri voice chatbot had a popular little Easter egg.
0:25.3	If you asked Siri to divide zero by zero, Siri famously said, imagine that you have zero cookies
0:33.2	and you split them evenly among zero friends. How many cookies does each person get?
0:39.5	See, it doesn't make sense.
0:41.1	And Cookie Monster is sad that there are no cookies
0:44.3	and you are sad that you have no friends.
0:49.0	That bit of playfulness prompted people to say things like,
0:52.5	dang, she's a total savage today.
0:56.8	Siri was a snarky she and not just a voice assistant. That's a language quirk called personification.
1:04.3	It refers to giving human traits like moods, emotions, or intentions to something non-human.
1:12.7	It's one of the oldest and most instinctive tricks in the storytelling playbook, and it's why we have phrases like,
1:18.1	the wind howled, the camera loves her, and my GPS betrayed me. So what is personification
1:27.1	really? Well, it's a kind of metaphor. When we say,
1:31.2	time marches on, we're not describing time marching down a trail with literal legs. It's just our
1:38.2	way of making an abstract idea more vivid and relatable. In fact, the word personification comes from the Latin persona,
1:46.8	meaning mask, and fatura meaning to make. So personification literally means to make into a person.
1:56.8	We do it because it helps us understand our world. Abstract ideas and inanimate objects don't have emotions, but we do. And personification lets us connect our inner experience to the outer world. Even old English poets loved personification. In Beowulf, the ocean welcomes the hero's ship, and the dawn steals
2:20.9	over the waves. In Anglo-Saxon riddles, everyday objects like books, onions, and shields,
2:28.8	speak in the first person, describing their own lives and struggles. Here's an example. I am a lonely warrior,
2:37.6	wounded by iron, scarred by sword, weary of battle. The speaker is a shield, lamenting its lot in life.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Mignon Fogarty, Inc., and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Mignon Fogarty, Inc. and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.