found object
Americannoun
noun
Etymology
Origin of found object
1955–60; translation of French objet trouvé
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
“It’s a found object, but price-wise it’s the same as a sculpture,” he said, laughing again.
From New York Times • Jun. 9, 2023
Near a subway station entrance on a busy traffic island, the gesture transformed a private function accommodated by Duchamp’s found object into a desperate social act, which Hammons titled “Pissed Off.”
From Los Angeles Times • May 30, 2023
The partly curved shape of the semi-wooden upright might seem to emulate a found object, but it was actually generated with geographic-information-system data.
From Washington Post • Feb. 10, 2023
Johns said he liked it because it allowed him to treat the design of the painting as a given, a found object, and then to do various painterly things to it.
From The New Yorker • Jul. 3, 2018
Most viewers will recall a key sculpture in the series that is accidentally bumped off its plinth and broken: The work is, unsurprisingly, called “Untitled,” and consists of exactly one found object, a brick.
From Salon • Jul. 23, 2017
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.