unperson

See also: Unperson

English

Etymology

From un- +‎ person. Coined by George Orwell in 1949 as part of the Newspeak in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, where it refers to a person who has been executed or has fallen out of favor; whose entire history has been erased.

Noun

unperson (plural unpersons or unpeople)

1. A person who has been stripped of rights, identity, or humanity.

   With his identity stolen, he became an unperson, unable to prove his existence to the government.

   • 1965 February 25, Harrison E. Salisbury, “Kremlin Chimes' Banished Stalin”, in The New York Times‎^[1], →ISSN:

     In accordance with the change in the party line, Stalin vanished from the play, disappearing even before Mr. Krushchev's denunciation at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party. Stalin became an “unperson,” in the terminology of George Orwell's “1984”.

   • 2000 October 13, John Ezard, Danny Gittings, “Nobel award amazes Chinese writer and literary world”, in The Guardian:

     Though Gao is classed as an unperson in China, which did not react officially yesterday, the award was forecast to cause widespread private joy there as the literary equivalent of the country winning the World Cup.

Translations

human stripped of rights

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 非人 (zh) (fēirén)

• Esperanto: malpersono
• Finnish: epähenkilö (fi)
• Hungarian: nem létezőnek tekintett személy, jogaitól megfosztott személy, (in reference to the novel “1984”) nemszemély
• Portuguese: impessoa f, despessoa f

Verb

unperson (third-person singular simple present unpersons, present participle unpersoning, simple past and past participle unpersoned)

1. (transitive) To strip (a person) of rights, identity, or humanity.
   • 1958 May 3, anonymous author, “Lay Professors in Catholic Colleges”, in America, volume 99, number 5, →ISSN, page 160:

     Unhappily, shortcomings here on the part of even a few schools provide a handle for the type of irresponsible generalization that recently labeled the lay professor on the Catholic campus "unwanted, unpaid, uncared for and unpersoned."

   • 2024, Leah Libresco Sargeant, “Embryos as Schrödinger’s Persons”, in The New Atlantis, number 76, Center for the Study of Technology and Society, →ISSN, page 41:

     Could a decision in the clinic’s favor today mean that, in that future, the lab-gestated babies would be legally unpersoned, because the womb had been held to impart a worth the child did not have on its own?

See also

• nonperson

Anagrams

• prenouns