personals
- 1Plural of personal.
He placed an advertisement among the personals hoping to reconnect with an old friend.
The magazine's personals filled an entire column each week.
Note
This plural is most often met as a section heading. In a newspaper or magazine, the personals are the advertisements in which people look for others with similar interests, and that meaning of personal usually appears in the plural. Elsewhere it is an ordinary count plural, as when one's personals are one's own property. The same spelling also carries the rare 'private matters' sense.
- 2Matters that belong properly to a person's own private concerns rather than to public or shared affairs.
He guarded his personals closely, sharing little even with close friends.
Her diary recorded the small personals she trusted to no one else.
Note
Here the word is a rare noun for private business. In Edwin Balmer's Waylaid by Wireless (1909), an apologetic Englishman says he "did not intend to pry into personals," and pry into is the kind of verb it suits. In everyday writing, personal matters or private affairs is clearer, because readers may otherwise think of the newspaper-section plural.
personals is a form of personal
personal, noun: A short advertisement, in a newspaper, magazine, or website, placed by someone hoping to find a romantic partner or a friend; usually in the plural. Full entry
- Forms
- personalpersonals plural
- Spelling
- personal → personals: add -s
- Sound
- The ending sounds like /z/.
Use it in a sentence
Write your own sentence with personals, and AI will tell you whether it fits and which meaning you used.