Meanings
- not comparableOf a picture, made from a painting by numbers kit.
- figurativelynot comparableBy rote, without thought or creativity.
This is not a cookbook full of passive recipes, nor is it a paint-by-numbers approach to teaching. Instead, it provides the fresh clay, the carving tools, and the spirited inspiration to form the clay to match our intent.
2009, Diane Heacox, Rick Wormeli, Making Differentiation a Habit1 more example
Though flawed by a paint-by-numbers methodology, the security classification process, so frequently sought by nineteenth century humanitarians, has resulted in an array of medium and minimum security jails feeding into scores of community corrections facilities on quiet streets across the country.
1999, Peter H. Hennessy, Canada's big house: the dark history of the Kingston Penitentiary, page 172
Cite this entry
paint-by-numbers. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/paint-by-numbers
“paint-by-numbers.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/paint-by-numbers. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “paint-by-numbers,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/paint-by-numbers.
Source: paint-by-numbers on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.