picture

Pronunciation

• IPA: UK /ˈpɪk.tʃə/, US /ˈpɪk.tʃɚ/^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English pictur, borrowed from Latin pictūra (“painting”),^[2][3][4] from pictus (“painted”), past participle of pingere (“to paint, embroider”),^[2][3][5] the source of paint,^[6][7] from Proto-Indo-European *peig- (“to adorn by colouring or carving”).^[5][7] Klein notes that painture is a doublet.^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

Drawing, painting, the act of painting: before 1420, in Lydgate's Troy Book,^[3] or about 1420,^[8] a sense now obsolete.^[2][4]

Semantic evolution

An individual painting or drawing is from 1484,^[8] and a portrait from 1505.^[8] A mental image is first recorded before 1547, and a vivid verbal description in Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost, 1588.^[3] A person strongly resembling another, as in the picture of his father, is from 1712,^[8] and something very beautiful, pretty as a picture, from 1815.^[8] The verb meant “to paint, depict” about 1489, “to describe in words” from 1586, and “to imagine” from 1738.^[3][8] Picture book is by 1801, picture postcard from 1899, in the picture from 1900, and picture window from 1938.^[2] A picture is worth a thousand words is attested from 1918 and probably came from the publishing trade.^[2] In British English the pictures is the cinema.^[9]

Timeline

• c. 1420 – the art of painting (Lydgate).^[3][8]
• 1484 – a painting or drawing.^[8]
• c. 1489 – verb, to depict.^[3]
• before 1547 – a mental image.^[3]
• 1588 – a vivid description (Shakespeare).^[3]
• 1738 – verb, to imagine.^[3][8]
• 1801 – picture book.^[2]
• 1918 – worth a thousand words.^[2]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. A painting, drawing or photograph; an image on a flat surface.
2. A vivid description; a mental image.
3. A person or thing closely resembling or embodying another: the picture of health.
4. The general situation: get the picture.
5. A film, a movie, and the pictures, the cinema.

Verb

1. To represent in a picture.
2. To form a mental image of; to visualize.
3. To describe vividly in words.

Word family

• picturable
• picturer
• picture-perfect
• picturesque
• B-picture
• picturephone

Related words

• depict
• pictorial
• paint
• pigment
• pinto

References

1. ^ Jones, Daniel (2011), Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, 18th ed., ed. Peter Roach, Jane Setter and John Esling, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
2. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (2000), 4th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin
6. ^ Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b c Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
8. ^ a b c d e f g h i Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
9. ^ Soanes, Catherine; Stevenson, Angus, eds. (2004), Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 11th ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press