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PORTRAIT
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Any likeness of a person, in any medium
Example:
the photographer made excellent portraits
Synonyms:
portrait; portrayal
Classified under:
Nouns denoting man-made objects
Hypernyms ("portrait" is a kind of...):
likeness; semblance (picture consisting of a graphic image of a person or thing)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "portrait"):
half-length (a portrait showing the body from only the waist up)
self-portrait (a portrait of yourself created by yourself)
Sense 2
Meaning:
A word picture of a person's appearance and character
Synonyms:
portrait; portraiture; portrayal
Classified under:
Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents
Hypernyms ("portrait" is a kind of...):
characterisation; characterization; delineation; depiction; picture; word-painting; word picture (a graphic or vivid verbal description)
Derivation:
portray (portray in words)
Context examples:
It was the face of a woman cut out of a portrait.
(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Charcoal portraits came next, and the entire family hung in a row, looking as wild and crocky as if just evoked from a coalbin.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
Ah! a portrait!
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Of pictures there were abundance, and some few good, but the larger part were family portraits, no longer anything to anybody but Mrs. Rushworth, who had been at great pains to learn all that the housekeeper could teach, and was now almost equally well qualified to shew the house.
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
Hence the ape-like tricks that he would play me, scrawling in my own hand blasphemies on the pages of my books, burning the letters and destroying the portrait of my father; and indeed, had it not been for his fear of death, he would long ago have ruined himself in order to involve me in the ruin.
(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)
In addition to providing new data about species evolution in sub-Saharan Africa, the results contribute to fleshing out the portrait of titanosaurians, which lived in habitats across the globe through the end of the Cretaceous period.
(Paleontologists discover new species of titanosaurian dinosaur in Tanzania, NSF)
Once more he looked at the portrait.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
“How near it may be to mine, I cannot pretend to say. You think it a faithful portrait undoubtedly.”
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
I bent over her and placed the portrait securely in one of the folds of her dress.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
He laughed heartily at my feeble portrait of that gentleman, and said he was a man to know, and he must know him.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
