picture

plural pictures · alternative pronunciation spelling pickchah · alternative pronunciation spelling pickchuh · alternative pronunciation spelling pitcha · alternative pronunciation spelling pitchah · alternative pronunciation spelling pitcher · alternative pronunciation spelling pitchuh · alternative pronunciation spelling pitchur

1. A representation of anything (as a person, a landscape, a building) upon canvas, paper, or other surface, by drawing, painting, printing, photography, etc.

   Orion hit a rabbit once; but though sore wounded it got to the bury, and, struggling in, the arrow caught the side of the hole and was drawn out.[…]. Ikey the blacksmith had forged us a spearhead after a sketch from a picture of a Greek warrior; and a rake-handle served as a shaft.

   1879, R[ichard] J[efferies], chapter II, in The Amateur Poacher, London: Smith, Elder, & Co., […], →OCLC

   1 more example

   Drawings and pictures are more than mere ornaments in scientific discourse. Blackboard sketches, geological maps, diagrams of molecular structure, astronomical photographs, MRI images, the many varieties of statistical charts and graphs: These pictorial devices are indispensable tools for presenting evidence, for explaining a theory, for telling a story.

   2012 March 28, Brian Hayes, “Pixels or Perish”, in American Scientist, volume 100, number 2, page 106

2. An image; a representation as in the imagination.

   My eyes make pictures when they are shut.

   1828, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, A Day Dream

   2 more examples

   So this was my future home, I thought! Certainly it made a brave picture. I had seen similar ones fired-in on many a Heidelberg stein. Backed by towering hills,[…]a sky of palest Gobelin flecked with fat, fleecy little clouds, it in truth looked a dear little city; the city of one's dreams.

   1908, W[illiam] B[lair] M[orton] Ferguson, chapter IV, in Zollenstein, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company, →OCLC

   Prior to seeing him and meeting him, and hearing him speak, I had conjured up a picture of him in my mind, which actual contact with him proved to be an illusion. I had conceived of him[…]as being tall, commanding, and as the advance notices of him, a sliver-tongued orator. I found him, however, to be the opposite of my mental picture; short, squat, unpretentious[…].

   2007, The Workers' Republic

   Synonyms: image

3. A painting.

   There was a picture hanging above the fireplace.

   1 more example

   Here the stripped panelling was warmly gold and the pictures, mostly of the English school, were mellow and gentle in the afternoon light.

   1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 3, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC

4. A photograph.

   I took a picture of the church.

   3 more examples

   It has not been used for many years, and although it was impracticable to photograph the engine in the small confines of the shed it was possible to obtain a picture of the plate which it still carries showing the former ownership.

   1952 February, H. C. Casserley, “Permanent Wayfarings”, in Railway Magazine, page 77

   Pictures of Lily made my life so wonderful / Pictures of Lily helped me sleep at night

   1967, “Pictures of Lily”, performed by The Who

   I've been looking so long at these pictures of you / That I almost believe that they're real

   1989, “Pictures of You”, in Disintegration, performed by The Cure

5. IndiadatedA motion picture.

   Casablanca is my all-time favorite picture.

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   "You make moving pictures. In jungles and places." "That's me. And I've picked you for the lead in my next picture."

   1932, Delos W. Lovelace, King Kong, published 1965, page 13

6. in pluralinformal("the pictures") Cinema (as a form of entertainment).

   Let's go to the pictures.

7. A paragon, a perfect example or specimen (of a category).

   She's the very picture of health.

   1 more example

   Franklin Delano Roosevelt was in poor health for much of his presidency, even though his doctors, his family, and even journalists colluded to portray him as the picture of health.

   2018, Sandeep Jauhar, Heart: a History, →ISBN, page 114

8. An attractive sight.

   The garden is a real picture at this time of year.

   1 more example

   it was heartening to see a young Indian football team Mata had invited to Manchester. His face was a picture when he listened to the little footballers sing a team song for him.

   2018 January 1, Donald McRae, “The Guardian footballer of the year 2017: Juan Mata”, in the Guardian

9. The art of painting; representation by painting.

   any well-expressed image[…]either in picture or sculpture

   1862, Henry Barnard, “Sir Henry Wotton”, in American Journal of Education

10. A figure; a model.

    the young king's picture[…]in virgin wax

    1655, James Howell, “To my Brother Dr. Howell”, in Epistolæ Ho-Elianæ. Familiar Letters Domestic and Forren. […], 3rd edition, volume (please specify the page), London: […] Humphrey Mos[e]ley, […], →OCLC

11. Situation.

    The employment picture for the older middle class is not so good.

    1 more example

    You can't just look at the election, you've got to look at the big picture.

12. Multicultural London EnglishA sample of an illegal drug.

    If you want me to buy your weed I’ll need a picture.

13. computingA format string in the COBOL programming language.

    To recapitulate, the pictures we have considered so far are: X – any character A — alphabetic characters and the space character […]

    1997, Roger Hutty, Mary Spence, Mastering COBOL Programming, page 20

    1 more example

    The COBOL restriction for the currency symbol in a picture string to be replaced by a single character currency symbol is a compromise solution.

    1997, John Barnes, Ada 95 Rationale: The Language - The Standard Libraries, page 390

present singular third person pictures · participle present picturing · participle past pictured · past pictured · alternative pronunciation spelling pickchah · alternative pronunciation spelling pickchuh · alternative pronunciation spelling pitcha · alternative pronunciation spelling pitchah · alternative pronunciation spelling pitcher · alternative pronunciation spelling pitchuh · alternative pronunciation spelling pitchur

1. transitiveTo represent in or with a picture.

   What is striking about the self portrait is that the patient had pictured herself as a much younger woman

   1966, Margaret Naumburg, Dynamically oriented art therapy, page 154

   2 more examples

   while upon the shaded top of the box, drawn in perspective, the artist had pictured a plate with the beautifully executed, twin-lobed, brainlike, halved kernel of a walnut.

   1962, Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire, page 130

   Anyone "skilled in the art" could see from their language that Lemp and Wightman had not invented or patented the invention their draftsman had pictured.

   1999, Lisa Gitelman, Scripts, grooves, and writing machines, page 107

2. transitiveTo imagine or envision.

   Picture yourself on a boat on a river / With tangerine trees and marmalade skies

   1967, Lennon–McCartney, “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”, in Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

   2 more examples

   Now that he had seen him once, he could picture the fish swimming in the water with his purple pectoral fins set wide as wings and the great erect tail slicing through the dark.

   1952 September 1, Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, →OCLC, page 67

   If you can picture this—a day in December / Picture this—freezing cold weather / You got clouds on your lids and you'd be on the skids

   1978, “Picture This”, in Debbie Harry (lyrics), Parallel Lines, performed by Blondie

3. transitiveTo depict or describe vividly.

   The sketch pictured here takes in the whole scene.

   2004, Helen South, The everything drawing book, page 75

   4 more examples

   I had never found him so impossible to soften or to move. I tried this way and I tried that; I pictured his future in an English gaol; I described the sorrow of his mother when I came back with the news; I said everything to touch his heart, but all to no purpose.

   1898, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Man with the Watches

   Drawing is picturing people, places, and things with line.

   1985, Edmund Burke Feldman, Thinking about art, page 252

   Many rock paintings picture various species of fish.

   1989, Jan Jelínek, The great art of the early Australians, page 490

   A plain, seemingly graceless stylist, his rather unpalatable movies, full of rabid, sloggingly orchestrated physical pain and psychic damage, picture crime as a monstrous, miasmal evil, divesting it of any glamour it ever had.

   2003, Jack Shadoian, Dreams and Dead Ends: The American Gangster Film, page 196