figurine

Etymology

It is borrowed from French figurine,^{[2][3][4][5][6]} recorded in Middle French in 1578 for a small figure in a picture and since 1829 for a small sculpted one,^[2] from Italian figurina,^[2][3][4][7] a diminutive of figura (“figure”) with -ina,^[2][4][8] from Latin figūra (“shape, form, figure”),^[3][4][7] from Proto-Indo-European *dheigh- (“to form, build”).^[3] It is related to figure.^[4][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

A small figure in a drawing or painting: 1740, in a translation of Juvenel de Carlencas's history of the belles-lettres, a sense now obsolete.^[2] The usual sense, a small modelled figure, is from 1844, in Punch;^[2] Etymonline and Merriam-Webster date the word to 1854,^[3][9] and Dictionary.com to 1850–55.^[8]

Semantic evolution

The word followed its French and Italian sources, which had both the painter's and the sculptor's sense.^[2] The painter's sense was soon lost in English,^[2] and the word settled on small three-dimensional figures,^[2][10] especially, as Merriam-Webster notes, the painted or gilded terracotta statuettes found in ancient tombs and ruins.^[9] Etymonline notes the near-synonym figurette, from Italian, from 1850.^[3] The 1896 first edition of the OED stressed it on the last syllable.^[2]

Timeline

• 1740 – a small figure in a drawing or painting (obsolete).^[2]
• 1844 – a small three-dimensional figure or model.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. A small carved or moulded figure; a statuette: a shelf of porcelain figurines.^[6][9][10]
2. Especially, a small painted or gilded terracotta figure from ancient tombs and ruins.^[9]

Related words

• figure
• figurative

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d e The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
5. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
7. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
8. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
9. ^ a b c d Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
10. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press