Meaning
A person who is not welcome: in strict diplomatic use, a foreign envoy the host government formally expels or refuses to accept, and in everyday use, anyone who has fallen out of favor with a group or institution. The register runs from formal to mock-grave, since English speakers reach for the Latin to add ironic weight to ordinary social exclusion. Formal in diplomatic contexts, wryly hyperbolic in social ones; the abbreviation PNG belongs to diplomatic jargon. Regional use: General English (borrowed from Latin).
Origin
Latin, literally 'person not pleasing' - persona 'person', non 'not', grata, feminine of gratus 'pleasing, acceptable'; the classical plural is personae non gratae. First recorded in English in 1885-90 (Random House via dictionary.com) in the diplomatic sense of a foreign representative unacceptable to the accrediting government. The practice is now codified in Article 9 of the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, under which a receiving state may declare any member of a diplomatic mission persona non grata at any time and without explanation - a standard response to suspected espionage, including Cold War tit-for-tat expulsions. From that technical base the phrase broadened to anyone socially unwelcome.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- personae non gratae
- PNG
Usage Examples
- After the leaked cables, the embassy's second secretary was declared persona non grata and given seventy-two hours to leave.
- Ever since he argued with the chairman, he has been persona non grata at the club's monthly dinners.
- The council voted to declare the developer persona non grata, a gesture with no legal force but plenty of symbolism.