personnel
noun
Simple meaning
Collection of people in an organization, such as employees and office staff, members of the military.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
persuhnehlSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
pɚsəˈnɛl
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
Collection of people in an organization, such as employees and office staff, members of the military, etc.
uncountable
A human resources department.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- A1 · Beginner (estimated)
- Frequency
- Common
- Typical Use
- General English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Collection of people in an organization, such as employees and office staff, members of the military, etc.
Used this way, personnel is a specialist word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. This is a military use: it belongs to service and operational language.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Specialist/technical
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Specialized
- Connotation
- Clinical and technical
- Usage feel
- Technical and specialized
Where it naturally appears
- Military
- Historical writing
- News/reporting
- Technical/specialist writing
Usage note
In general conversation this sense usually needs explaining — outside its field, people reach for a plainer word.
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Collection
Department
Willing
Other combinations
Tap the highlighted word to open its own entry.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
A military vehicle (usually armored) for transporting military personnel and their equipment.
Military personnel lost by death or capture.
The department responsible for hiring and training and placing employees and for setting policies for personnel management.
The department responsible for hiring and training and placing employees and for setting policies for personnel management.
A bag in which the body of a dead soldier is placed.
An armored vehicle (usually equipped with caterpillar treads) that is used to transport infantry.
Related Words
Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: collection of people in an organization
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.