prosopopoeia.

A rhetorical device that represents an absent, dead, imaginary, or personified being as speaking.

Use it for

Words that belong together

• rhetorical prosopopoeia
• prosopopoeia in a poem

On the page

Prosopopoeia let the ruined city answer the travelers in the poem.

She used prosopopoeia to imagine the absent witness’s reply without presenting it as testimony.

Usage notes

Primary category: literary. Forms: Usually uncountable; plural prosopopoeias for separate instances. Legacy lexical fields mirror sense 1 only. Use numbered sense fields for all meanings.