as in to play
to pretend to be (what one is not) in appearance or behavior
likes to personate the man of the world, but he's still the small-town hick that he always was
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Example Sentences
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Recent Examples of personate
Till’s motifs swept though the ensemble, as horns, clarinets, bassoons, violin all had a chance to personate the character.
—
By Libby Hanssen, kansascity.com, 3 June 2017
By Libby Hanssen, kansascity.com, 3 June 2017
Recent Examples of Synonyms for personate
Verb
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Contrary to some online sentiment, Martinez still fervently believes Portugal are closer to starting a goal up than a man down when playing Ronaldo.—
James Horncastle,
New York Times,
10 June 2026
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Hasley hailed from Pittsburgh and played university football before venturing to Hollywood to pursue his dreams as a writer.—
Clara Harter,
Los Angeles Times,
10 June 2026
Verb
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Armed with those details, Logendran contacted Rogers’ online support team and impersonated the husband, claiming he had been locked out of his work account.—
Winston Cho,
HollywoodReporter,
4 June 2026
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Catholic Charities has publicly denounced representatives’ being impersonated to scam immigrants.—
Albinson Linares,
NBC news,
4 June 2026
Verb
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Another attractive use for machine learning is to train a model to imitate other models.—
ArsTechnica,
ArsTechnica,
8 June 2026
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His use of jocular names for detention centers has been imitated by other Republican governors creating state facilities to be used by ICE.—
Eric Schlosser,
The Atlantic,
4 June 2026
Verb
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In the ongoing fight for women’s equal rights, Pawol had proved a female baseball umpire can be second-guessed, proved wrong and humiliated by technology and mocked by howling fans on social media just like a man can.—
Miami Herald,
Miami Herald,
2 June 2026
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That staffer was later fired by Collins after posting a social media comment on behalf of the Collins campaign mocking a woman who attempted suicide after accusing Matt Lauer of rape.—
Irene Wright,
USA Today,
1 June 2026
Verb
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But the upside of this Carsley erasure is that the show can portray a smooth transition from Southgate straight to Tuchel.—
Jack Pitt-Brooke,
New York Times,
10 June 2026
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Frémaux also drew attention to Hans Zischler, who portrays Thomas Mann in the film.—
Elsa Keslassy,
Variety,
9 June 2026
Verb
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While acts as big as Lynyrd Skynyrd have headlined these nightly events, local bands like The Pork Tornadoes draw just as big a crowd.—
Arati Menon,
Condé Nast Traveler,
7 June 2026
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Combat nausea with Reliefband, a 100% natural, fast-acting temporary treatment of nausea and vomiting associated with motion sickness, anxiety, migraines, morning sickness, chemotherapy, amusement park rides and VR gaming.—
ABC News,
ABC News,
6 June 2026
Cite this Entry
“Personate.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/personate. Accessed 10 Jun. 2026.
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