What's the difference between personify and signify?

Personify


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To regard, treat, or represent as a person; to represent as a rational being.
  • (v. t.) To be the embodiment or personification of; to impersonate; as, he personifies the law.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) And Pippi Longstocking, her most famous character, comes really close to being the personified proof of that… So where did Pippi come from?
  • (2) This white child had as his alter-ego, really as part of his self-representation, a black half of the self, personified as a black boy whom he fantasized to be his twin.
  • (3) What the papers say The Economist (for Obama) "A man who once personified hope and centrism set a new low by unleashing attacks on Mitt Romney even before the first Republican primary.
  • (4) He is sexism, male domination, and oppression against women personified.
  • (5) The Conservative reaction, personified by David Cameron , is to promote social mobility and meritocracy.
  • (6) Are they going to move in the direction of logic and rationality, or are they going to continue to pursue this anti-scientific fringe movement within their party that is personified by people liked Ted Cruz ?
  • (7) Robert Holcomb perhaps personified what Terry describes today as "a different breed of black soldier entering the battlefield" in the latter half of the 1960s.
  • (8) Yet the campaign fed doubts among party managers about Sir Alec's ability to personify enterprise, yout hfulness, and relevance to contemporary circumstances.
  • (9) They both ran in the 2011 primaries won by Hollande, and personified two styles, two political orientations within the Socialist party.
  • (10) When asked why, he said: “It was about finding that balance that would bring bipartisan support to the bill.” Reaching across the aisle in search of compromise and consensus is the professed goal of almost every candidate for public office in the US, particularly in recent times, when presidents have come to personify not unity but division.
  • (11) Brody is, after all, personifying a struggle between good and evil: the good bit is the all-American father-hero-soldier; the bad is the convert to Islam and terrorism (what a myth-busting connection, thanks Homeland!)
  • (12) He decorates games, rarely dominates them, and personified the lack of ruthlessness on display.
  • (13) Whether or not we, or you, agree, there will be somebody who truly believes that such and such a new act are magnificence magnified and brilliance personified.
  • (14) I’m not running against him or against anyone else.” How long Rubio can maintain the sunny demeanor that has personified his candidacy thus far is unclear.
  • (15) It can be shown that the evolution of the Health Service has been shaped by three differing types of underlying logic: the professional (because the technical side is chiefly represented by the professionals who personify the scientific and technical aspects of health problems), the social and the economic.
  • (16) There is simply an expectation of excellence that he personifies that made us all remember why we wanted to work at the Washington Post and it’s sort of euphoric.” Later in 2013 the Graham family sold the business to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, whose internet background brought fresh ideas and deep pockets.
  • (17) If, however, you were multinational company, Hartnett would be indulgence personified.
  • (18) The Telegraph's religion editor and Church of England priest George Pitcher has described him as personifying "the new amorality of avaricious, red-top, vulgar New Britain".
  • (19) Ryan Bertrand personified this when taking an age to deliver a free-kick and then banging it high into the Stretford End.
  • (20) He personifies the new dispensation, in which men and women glide between corporations and politics, and appear to act as agents for big business within government.

Signify


Definition:

  • (n.) To show by a sign; to communicate by any conventional token, as words, gestures, signals, or the like; to announce; to make known; to declare; to express; as, a signified his desire to be present.
  • (n.) To mean; to import; to denote; to betoken.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) These steps signify a willingness for engagement not seen before, but they have been overshadowed by the "nuclear crisis" triggered in October 2002 when Pyongyang admitted to having the "know-how", but not the technology, for a highly enriched uranium route to nuclear weapons.
  • (2) Differences in reactivity of various electrogenic membrane components to tetrodotoxin are discussed as signifying differences in chemical structures.
  • (3) These results are interpreted to signify that (1) inspiratory inhibitory inputs are more susceptible to depression by PB than inspiratory drive mechanisms; (2) the breathing pattern of apneusis results when summed inspiratory inhibition is reduced below a critical minimum level; (3) vagal and pneumotaxic center inhibitions on inspiration are equally weighted at apneusis, but not at apnea.
  • (4) The process of recovery has three stages, in the first the patient is unconscious, in the second he or she regains full consciousness signified by the end of the period of post traumatic amnesia and continues to show evidence of rapid improvement in basic physical and mental functions.
  • (5) These collective findings may signify an interesting difference in the release process in such diverse systems or denote a dissimilarity in the transport or processing of the toxin when applied into intact neurones or cells permeabilised by detergent or streptolysin.
  • (6) This signifies the presence of different immunogenic components on SRBC No.
  • (7) Spanish football fans’ habit of waving white hankies tends to be derisive, signifying that they wish a hapless manager to be put out of their club’s misery.
  • (8) Neutropenia in the presence of respiratory distress in the first 72 hours had an 84% likelihood of signifying bacterial disease, whereas neutropenia in the presence of asphyxia had a 68% likelihood of signifying bacterial disease.
  • (9) From Bantry Bay to Bucharest, European ceilings today bear witness to a mass hanging signifying the end of the incandescent bulb.
  • (10) On deeper examination, such requests may signify staff dysfunction caused by arousal of conflictual feelings about the behavior of illness of the patient.
  • (11) A silent protester cries while wearing a sticker over her mouth signifying the loss in wages from the right-to-work law in Lansing, Michigan, on 12 December 2012.
  • (12) Generation of plasmin activity in the first hour was signified by an 11-fold rise in D-dimer levels (p less than 0.0001); inhibition of plasmin was reflected by a 36-fold rise in plasmin-alpha 2 antiplasmin complexes (p less than 0.0001), as well as by a transient 16% decrease in alpha 2-antiplasmin activity (p less than 0.01).
  • (13) The main symptom "incoordination" (ataxia, asynergy, paresis, paralysis) is used by us more precisely only in case of impairment of nervous system by neoplastic infiltrations and does not signify as possible symptoms of general physical weakness, for example faltering, staggering, tumbling or lameness.
  • (14) This suggests that isolation of EBV from HD tissue does not always signify a pathogenetic role for the virus.
  • (15) This will signify ‘ringing the changes’ in their chosen campaign.
  • (16) This activation may signify a specific genetic response to ischemia affecting tolerance to ischemia and ultimate cell survival.
  • (17) The remaining question was whether or not this necessarily signified pervasive tissue hypoxia.
  • (18) About 1 mol of ATP was hydrolyzed per mol of Ca2+ transported, signifying that the ATPase activity was relevant to the Ca2+ transport system of the membranes.
  • (19) 10(-3), signifying that coproferrihaem shows the least tendency to dimerize of any ferrihaem so far investigated.
  • (20) Forrest (1965, 1969, 1973, 1976) has attacked the contention of many cognitive psychologists that schizophrenic behavior is best signified by deviations in language and aberrancies of thought.