How to Describe a Person in English with 154 Common Terms
Do you ever find yourself searching for the right words to describe someone? Even us native speakers sometimes find it hard to talk about ourselves in English. Whether you’re talking about a friend’s appearance, a colleague’s personality or even describing yourself, the right words make all the difference.
Today we’ll explore over 150 words to make your descriptions more natural and accurate—perfect for conversations, writing and even business.
Contents
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What Are the Different Ways to Describe People?
Let’s say you want to describe a friend, a family member or a boss. You will probably use a few kinds of information.
- Appearance is what someone looks like on the outside.
- Mannerisms are the ways that someone acts or behaves.
- Character traits are the little things that make someone who they are. In other words, they make up someone’s personality.
- Emotions are what someone feels at a certain time.
In this post, we’ll go over useful vocabulary for describing all of these.
You will see this vocabulary used a lot in conversations and online.
1. Describing Someone’s Appearance
To describe someone’s appearance, you will often use adjectives. An adjective is a kind of word that describes a noun (a person, place or thing).
Here are some words and phrases you can use to describe a person’s appearance.
Some of them are synonyms, or words that mean almost or exactly the same thing.
Knowing more than one way of saying something is very helpful when describing people.
Describing a face
Face Eyes Nose Eyebrows round hooded humped shaggy oval round pointed thin square almond-shaped sharp plucked triangle deep set straight arched long close set snub soft arch freckled wide set aquiline high arch rosy turned up thick puffy crooked upwards
Hair Texture Hair Color Hair Length Facial Hair straight blonde short-haired has a beard wavy dark-haired long-haired has a moustache curly red-haired bald
(no hair) has a goatee frizzy
Describing a body
Weight Height well-built tall full-bodied short curvy petite heavy pint-sized overweight thin slim skinny
Shoulders Legs Arms broad shapely beefy delicate thick powerful sloping feminine muscular narrow scrawny skinny rounded sinewy toned well-defined athletic ripped strong crooked slender bulky sleek thick
Overall Appearance Style of Dress good-looking well-dressed attractive stylish beautiful trendy pretty unfashionable gorgeous frumpy handsome plain-looking not much to look at
2. Describing Someone’s Mannerisms
Someone’s mannerisms are the way they act or speak. When you speak, do you move your arms a lot?
Do you touch your hair or bite your lip? All these things are mannerisms.
Since mannerisms are usually actions, they are often described by phrases with verbs (action words).
You can add the person’s name or a pronoun before it (he, she, they…).
For example, “He taps his fingers.”
Here are some common mannerisms you might use to describe people.
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3. Describing Someone’s Character
A person’s character is their personality, who they are on the inside.
When you talk about someone, you might mention what they are like as a person.
Here are some ways to do that.
Friendly Mean Respectful Disrespectful nice unpleasant polite rude kind nasty well-mannered impolite pleasant vicious considerate vulgar warm cruel thoughtful obscene
Smart Not Smart Gets Upset Easily Relaxed clever dense hot-headed calm intelligent dumb hot-tempered laid-back sharp stupid moody easy-going wise not too bright temperamental carefree
Extroverted Introverted Funny Doesn't Laugh a Lot outgoing quiet hilarious serious sociable soft-spoken witty reserved approachable shy silly boring
Tries Big Things Arrogant Modest ambitious conceited humble determined stuck up unpretentious goal-oriented self-absorbed unassuming resourceful
4. Describing Someone’s Feelings
People’s feelings are always changing. You can be happy one moment, and then hear some bad news and become sad.
You always know how you feel, but it isn’t always easy to tell how someone else is feeling.
You can look at how someone is speaking or even how they’re sitting to understand how they feel.
When you’re not sure how someone feels, you can say they might be feeling something.
You can also say someone looks like they’re feeling a certain way. These phrases show that you might be wrong.
For example, you can say, “I’m mad” when you’re talking about yourself. But you might say “He looks mad,” when you’re talking about another person.
This makes sense if this person is yelling into his phone with his face red and his fists clenched (all signs that someone could be mad!).
You can use these words to talk about how someone is feeling, how they were feeling before or how they might feel in the future.
Happy Sad Nervous Relaxed elated unhappy anxious calm exuberant down stressed serene cheerful melancholy agitated tranquil delighted miserable ecstatic out of sorts
Tired Well-rested Mad Bored exhausted energetic angry disinterested worn out refreshed furious inattentive fatigued invigorated fed up
Why Learn How to Describe a Person?
We describe people all the time. For example, you might tell your friends what your boss is like.
You might tell your sister what that cute guy you saw looks like.
Even outside of everyday conversations, it’s very useful to know how to describe people.
Descriptions are used a lot in books, in articles and in other kinds of communication in English.
Reading or hearing a description of someone can give you a better idea of what they look like or act like.
Descriptions are also useful in the business world, often crucial to conversations and presentations at work.
The Importance of Being Polite When Describing a Person
Some ways of describing people are polite and respectful.
Take the compliments in this video, for example. A native English speaker drives around town saying nice things to people about the way that they look!
Of course, other ways to describe people can be considered rude.
Use judgment and common sense. Think about how you would feel if you heard someone using the same words to describe you.
If you’re ever stuck trying to think of a different way to say a word, look it up in a thesaurus like this one.
A thesaurus lists both synonyms and antonyms (words that have an opposite meaning). It’s a great way to discover new words and more ways of describing people.
Another good thesaurus resource is Visual Thesaurus, which is like a thesaurus that’s also a map. It shows you the connections between related words. This is great for helping you choose the very best adjective to describe someone.
So, how would you describe yourself?
Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)
And One More Thing...
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If you want to watch it, the FluentU app has probably got it.
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FluentU lets you learn engaging content with world famous celebrities.
For example, when you tap on the word "searching," you see this:
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