prosopopoeia
An act of personifying a person or object when communicating to an audience; a figure of speech involving this.
countable, uncountable
Of the prosopopœia or personification, there are two kinds: one when action and character are attributed to fictitious, irrational, or even inanimate objects; the others, when a probable but fictitious speech is assigned to a real character.
The personification of an abstraction.
countable, uncountable
Where it comes from
Learned borrowing from Ancient Greek προσωποποιία (prosōpopoiía, “dramatization, the putting of speeches into the mouths of characters”). By surface analysis, prosopo- + -poeia.
Adapted from the Wiktionary entry prosopopoeia (CC BY-SA 4.0).