As he did for the Taffetas, Mr. Lewis invented personalities and a history for the Cardigans.

"He wrote a team book in a way that had characters relating to one another without phony sounding conflicts, without inventing one-syllable personalities."

They invent new pasts and new personalities; they have a vast repertory of wisecracks; and, best of all, they suffer.

With his brilliant meditations on "torque" and "grunt" and "handling", he invents personalities and virtues for these inanimate objects.

Over time, he invented new personalities to stave off ennui.

They have every right to be different - it's very presumptuous of us to invent personalities for them simply because we've seen them act on a cinema screen, but it can still be a shock when they're not as you'd hoped.

In his recent book on Joe DiMaggio, Richard Ben Cramer described how the owners, along with a complicit media, created an unofficial "hero machine" that invented entire personalities around the best sluggers.

Ever larger numbers of poseurs are inventing alternative virtual personalities in chat rooms.

"I sort of fell into this middle ground, average schmo kind of guy," he said in the interview, adding that he broke free by inventing personalities.

Alan Sepinwall of The Star-Ledger commented: "This episode makes clear that Cavil didn't invent entirely new personalities for his "parents" when he imprisoned them in new bodies.