personation

personation (countable and uncountable, plural personations)

1. The act of personating: the playing of a role or portrayal of a character
2. The roles or characters so played
   • 1890, Henry James, The Tragic Muse:

     It struck him abruptly that a woman whose only being was to "make believe," to make believe that she had any and every being that you liked, that would serve a purpose, produce a certain effect, and whose identity resided in the continuity of her personations, so that she had no moral privacy, as he phrased it to himself, but lived in a high wind of exhibition, of figuration—such a woman was a kind of monster, in whom of necessity there would be nothing to like, because there would be nothing to take hold of.

3. (Britain) The act of voting in an election by impersonating someone else.

• Ballot Secrecy Factsheet, p2

• onapristone