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:
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 23, Brian Hayes, “Pixels or Perish”, in American Scientist, volume 100, number 2, page 106:
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An image; a representation as in the imagination.
My eyes make pictures when they are shut.1828, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, A Day Dream:
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:
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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:
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A painting.
There was a picture hanging above the fireplace.
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:
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A photograph.
I took a picture of the church.
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:
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Pictures of Lily made my life so wonderful / Pictures of Lily helped me sleep at night1967, “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 real1989, “Pictures of You”, in Disintegration, performed by The Cure:
"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:
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In plural, Informal ("the pictures") Cinema (as a form of entertainment).
Let's go to the pictures.
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A paragon, a perfect example or specimen (of a category).
She's the very picture of health.
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:
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An attractive sight.
The garden is a real picture at this time of year.
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:
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The art of painting; representation by painting.
any well-expressed image[…]either in picture or sculpture1862, Henry Barnard, “Sir Henry Wotton”, in American Journal of Education:
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A figure; a model.
the young king's picture[…]in virgin wax1655, 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:
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Situation.
The employment picture for the older middle class is not so good.
You can't just look at the election, you've got to look at the big picture.
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:
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:
Etymology Inherited from Middle English picture, from Latin pictūra (“the art of painting, a painting”), from pingō (“to paint”). Doublet of pictura.
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To represent in or with a picture.
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:
What is striking about the self portrait is that the patient had pictured herself as a much younger woman1966, Margaret Naumburg, Dynamically oriented art therapy, page 154:
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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:
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To imagine or envision.
Picture yourself on a boat on a river / With tangerine trees and marmalade skies1967, Lennon–McCartney, “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”, in Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band:
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 skids1978, “Picture This”, in Debbie Harry (lyrics), Parallel Lines, performed by Blondie:
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To depict or describe vividly.
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:
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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:
The sketch pictured here takes in the whole scene.2004, Helen South, The everything drawing book, page 75: