> Most people who (quite reasonably) hate corporate personhood would probably have a knee-jerk reaction that personhood for a river can/should be normalized.
Only if/because they are reading too much into the concept of legal personhood. A thing being a person doesn't mean the thing is equivalent to a human or that it has every right that every human has. It generally just means that the law attributes certain rights and obligations to that thing because that is more convenient than finding the right human(s) to attribute them to in the circumstances.
The proper reference isn't the dictionary. US socialization stems largely from the US Constitution. Within that framework, Person has a different meaning from the dictionary or most of the US legal frameworks. From that perspective, the objection to Person being ascribed to non-persons is obvious and warranted.
The US Supreme Court decided in 1886 [1] that it's the 14th amendment.
The general article on Wikipedia [2] has more info about it, and discusses the fact that corporate personhood is an abstraction that represents the rights of the individuals owning or running the company. "Statutes violating their prohibitions in dealing with corporations must necessarily infringe upon the rights of natural persons" and modern cases. That article also discusses how, from the 1920s to the 80s, general corporate personhood wasn't as broad as it is today. It also mentions, at the top, historical instances of the idea.
But to your point, no corporation in the US has full, equal rights to a natural person. It's an abstraction that the legal system does not apply blindly. You could change the phrase "corporate person" to something like "corporate legal entity with a set of rights that overlaps with natural persons" or demand a different approach to the rights of a corporation, but I don't think "you're using that word wrong" will hold much weight with legal professionals.
Title 1 Chapter 1 Section 1 of the US Code begins:
In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, unless the context indicates otherwise—
words importing the singular include and apply to several persons, parties, or things;
words importing the plural include the singular;
words importing the masculine gender include the feminine as well;
words used in the present tense include the future as well as the present;
the words “insane” and “insane person” shall include every idiot, insane person, and person non compos mentis;
the words “person” and “whoever” include corporations, companies, associations, firms, partnerships, societies, and joint stock companies, as well as individuals;
It's not even "a thing being a person", this is just dumbing down the situation. A boat is not a person. A boat is not a person "legally speaking", either. A boat has some of the same rights that people have.
Only if/because they are reading too much into the concept of legal personhood. A thing being a person doesn't mean the thing is equivalent to a human or that it has every right that every human has. It generally just means that the law attributes certain rights and obligations to that thing because that is more convenient than finding the right human(s) to attribute them to in the circumstances.