limner

[lim-ner]

noun

1. a person who paints or draws.

2. an itinerant painter of 18th-century America who usually had little formal training.

3. a person who describes or depicts in words.

   an essayist known as a fine limner of prominent people and their careers.

4. an illuminator of medieval manuscripts.

Word History and Origins

Origin of limner¹

1350–1400; Middle English lymnour, lymynour; limn, -or ², -er ¹

Example Sentences

So I’m looking at this portrait of so-and-so as a little girl and she is standing there with this total old-man face because the limner wasn’t any good.

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New England folk art and furniture are more prominent than ever, with limner portraits, including at least three by the self-taught painter Ammi Philips being especially notable this year.

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No limner's hand ever drew a more faithful picture than the one I have of her even now engraved on the tablet of my heart.

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We have noticed some miniature painters, or "limners in little," who flourished in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when miniature painting had among its greatest masters Samuel Cooper, who has never been surpassed.

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To a certain extent photography, quoad art, is wrong and the limner is right.

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