portrait

[pawr-trit, -treyt, pohr-]

noun

1. a likeness of a person, especially of the face, as a painting, drawing, or photograph.

   a gallery of family portraits.

2. a verbal picture or description, usually of a person.

   a biography that provides a fascinating portrait of an 18th-century rogue.

adjective

1. Digital Technology.,  relating to or producing vertical, upright orientation of computer or other digital output, with lines of data parallel to the two shorter sides of a page or screen. Compare landscape.

portrait

/ -treɪt, ˈpɔːtrɪt /

noun

1. 1. a painting, drawing, sculpture, photograph, or other likeness of an individual, esp of the face

   2. ( as modifier )

      a portrait gallery

2. a verbal description or picture, esp of a person's character

adjective

1. printing (of a publication or an illustration in a publication) of greater height than width Compare landscape

Other Word Forms

• portraitlike adjective

Word History and Origins

Origin of portrait¹

1560–70; < Middle French: a drawing, image, etc., noun use of past participle of portraire to portray

Example Sentences

Anchored by hours of conversation with Martin Scorsese and some of his longtime friends and collaborators, Rebecca Miller’s ‘Mr. Scorsese’ is a convincing portrait of a man whose life is work.

Read more on Los Angeles Times

Mr. Orr, a professor of political science at Brown University, provides a rewarding portrait of Diggs’s career as a civil-rights activist and legislator in his exhaustively researched biography, “House of Diggs.”

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

It’s a portrait of loss and yearning, made up of vivid recollections from her childhood, her family, and her previous relationships.

Read more on Los Angeles Times

Around a dozen mourners dressed in black hold portraits of Thailand's late Queen Sirikit outside the Chulalongkorn Hospital in Bangkok, where she had been receiving medical treatment.

Read more on Barron's

The two artists met at the Louvre in about 1865, and the show opens with a gallery of portraits Manet painted of Morisot shortly thereafter.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

Related Words

• account 
• characterization 
• depiction 
• figure 
• image 
• likeness 
• model 
• painting 
• photograph 
• picture 
• portrayal 
• profile 
• silhouette 
• sketch 
• snapshot 
• vignette