Meaning & use
personal dossier
Last updated
Meaning
nouncountable
A collection of detailed records or files about one person's life, background, or activities.
Grammar: Countable: you can say a personal dossier or personal dossiers.
Patterns
- keep a personal dossier on someone
- compile a personal dossier
- a secret personal dossier
The intelligence agency kept a personal dossier on every foreign journalist in the capital.
She discovered that her employer had compiled a personal dossier listing her medical appointments.
The leaked personal dossier contained details of his travels, friendships, and political views.
Word forms
| plural | personal dossiers |
|---|
Common combinations
- keep a dossier on someone
- The police kept a dossier on the group for years.
- compile a dossier
- He compiled a dossier of evidence before the trial.
- a secret dossier
- The newspaper published a secret dossier about the minister's finances.
- a dossier of evidence
- The lawyer handed the judge a dossier of evidence.
Synonyms and how they differ
- file
- A file is a general collection of papers or electronic records, while a dossier suggests a more complete and often investigative collection about a person.
- profile
- A profile is a short description of someone's character or history, often official; a dossier is usually longer and more detailed.
- record
- A record is a single piece of information or an official account, whereas a dossier is a whole set of such records.
Word family
- dossier noun
- A set of papers or documents about a particular person or subject.
Commonly confused: personal dossier or dose?
personal dossier vs dose
A dose is an amount of medicine; a dossier is a collection of documents. They sound similar only at the beginning.
Practice
The human rights group published a ______ on the prisoner, including letters, medical reports, and witness statements.
Choose one answer.
A personal dossier is a collection of detailed records about a person, which fits the list of documents. 'Dose' and 'dosage' relate to medicine, and 'doss' is not a noun.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “personal dossier”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.