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Glite Dictionary
personals

personals

1 3.6
A website section where people post ads to find friends or dates
  • noun
  • /ˈpɜrsənəlz/
translation icon : anuncios personales
  • She met her partner by responding to an ad in the personals online forum.
  • personals column

Examples

  • Many people find love through ads in the personals section of local newspapers.

  • Find it in the Gotham Globe Personals.

    Fiction book (1992)

  • Check out the Personals... maybe our future husbands are trying to contact us.

    Fiction book (2001)

  • Who shows up and personals are just people like, oh, God, he's God.

  • Yahoo Personals also offers a great dating service that features its members through detailed photo profiles.

    Blog text (11)

  • (flips through it until she gets to the Personals)

    Fiction book (2001)

  • Yahoo Personals

    Blog text (11)

  • I CAME FOR MY PERSONALS.

    Dead Poets Society (1989)

  • That being said, it's entirely fun to play online—meeting new people (via Match.com, MySpace, Yahoo Personals, whatever the flavor).

    Blog text (19)

  • After reading the personals, he decided to place his own advertisement seeking companionship.

Surface Forms

personal singular
personals plural

Morphology

personals = personal (transparent) = person + al + s

Formed from 'personal' pluralized as 'personals' to denote personal advertisements, a direct and regular derivation.

Etymology

Personals comes from personal, which comes from person meaning 'a person'. It was short for 'personal ads', small notices where people described themselves to find friends or partners, so today personals means the section for people looking for relationships.