oil painting
Americannoun
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oil paintings
plural
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the art or technique of painting with oil colors.
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a painting executed in oil colors.
noun
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a picture painted with oil paints
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the art or process of painting with oil paints
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informal he is not good-looking
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of oil painting
First recorded in 1775–85
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.
Nearby hangs Rockwell’s famous 1964 oil painting showing marshals escorting 6-year-old Ruby Bridges to an integrated school.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 8, 2026
But Jane, who enters her office to an oil painting of her father, smiling kindly in a maroon armchair, is confident that Sol would have wanted his holdings intact for generations to come.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 5, 2026
And yet the exhibition proper opens with a work that speaks to the artist’s commitment to America: his 1852 oil painting “The Natural Bridge, Virginia.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 31, 2026
In the oil painting, a young woman in a red dress sits on the edge of a motel bed, gripping the footboard tensely.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 3, 2025
They had inherited the furniture from Coraline’s grandmother, along with a wooden coffee table, a side table, a heavy glass ashtray, and the oil painting of a bowl of fruit.
From "Coraline" by Neil Gaiman
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.
