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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Heaton is best known for playing Jonathan Byers in Netflix’s smash hit series Stranger Things from the Duffer Brothers.—
Rosy Cordero,
Deadline,
1 July 2025
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Alex has given everything to the game and to the Golden Knights and has played through significant challenges in the pursuit of trying to win another Stanley Cup in Vegas.—
Ryan Gaydos,
FOXNews.com,
1 July 2025
Verb
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Why the latest PayPal phishing scam is so convincing Most phishing scams try (and fail) to impersonate big companies.—
Kurt Knutsson,
FOXNews.com,
28 June 2025
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That’s because Scattered Spider has also been known to send fake SMS text messages impersonating login systems to phish employees.—
Michael Kan,
PC Magazine,
27 June 2025
Verb
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But as these systems gained the ability to imitate reasoning, planning, and decision-making among options, emergent behaviors began raising red flags.—
Hamilton Mann,
Forbes.com,
29 June 2025
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Some fireworks transcend the standard pops and booms to imitate a non-fiery object.—
Ethan Wolin,
Sacbee.com,
28 June 2025
Verb
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In September 2024, she was mocked online after releasing a single.—
Kate Plummer,
MSNBC Newsweek,
25 June 2025
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Tonally, the show is all over the place, laying on the moody theatrics one moment, mocking Dave’s writerly pretenses the next.—
Nina Metz,
Chicago Tribune,
25 June 2025
Verb
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Oh Ae-sun (played by K-pop superstar IU, who also portrays Ae-sun’s daughter Geum-myeong) is a poor but ambitious girl who grows up on South Korea’s Jeju Island in the 1950s and 1960s.—
Regina Kim,
Forbes.com,
24 June 2025
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The company aimed to portray someone overcoming obstacles to achieve their dream.—
Andrew Ravens,
MSNBC Newsweek,
24 June 2025
Verb
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Recent federal policy directives are strengthening our ability to act.—
Mark Michalek,
Denver Post,
28 June 2025
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The actress, who broke through with her Oscar-winning performance in the 1990 film Misery, has over 200 acting and directing credits to her name.—
Brendan Le,
People.com,
28 June 2025
Cite this Entry
“Personate.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/personate. Accessed 8 Jul. 2025.
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