photo
noun
photo
1 American
[foh-toh]
/ ˈfoʊ toʊ /
photo-
2
American
photo
1
British
/ ˈfəʊtəʊ /
noun
photo-
2
British
combining form
-
of, relating to, or produced by light
photosynthesis
-
indicating a photographic process
photolithography
photo–
Scientific
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of photo1
First recorded in 1855–60; shortened form of photograph
Origin of photo-2
< Greek, combining form of phôs (genitive phōtós )
Explanation
Snap a picture with your camera and you get a photo, a recorded image made using light. To get a passport, driver's license, or school I.D., you need to have your photo taken. The word photo is short for photograph, a word whose Greek roots mean "written in light." It only took about 20 years after the invention of photographs for people to start using the colloquial (and quicker) photo. If you haven't visited a photo booth with your best friend, you really should; you'll leave with a strip of wonderfully silly photos of the two of you.
Vocabulary lists containing photo
Florida's B.E.S.T. Roots: photo
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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.
See Examples For:
The photo shows a vacationing couple seated in striped deck chairs beneath a brightly coloured parasol on a beach.
From Barron's ● Jul. 29, 2026
In April, Herbert posted a photo of them on Instagram and captioned it, “My world!”
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 28, 2026
"Race against time" says the i Paper, next to a photo of a French firefighter standing in front of a burning row of trees and tall grass.
From BBC ● Jul. 27, 2026
The detective’s Facebook friends urged her to make her post public, so she did — screenshots of Salute’s court records, her mug shot and her new school photo.
From Salon ● Jul. 27, 2026
The photo landed face up near the foot of my desk.
From "Firegirl" by Tony Abbott
It is important to develop alternative methods based on photo- and electrocatalysis, taking advantage of the sustainable solar energy and abundance of omnipresent water.
From Science Daily ● Mar. 25, 2024
They welcomed daughter True in April 2018 — just as a photo- and video-fueled cheating scandal involving Thompson and another woman hit the internet.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 4, 2022
In addition to the social network Facebook, Meta also owns the photo- and video-sharing platform Instagram as well as the messaging application WhatsApp.
From Salon ● Oct. 30, 2021
If one of social media’s aims is to help us “live our best life,” then something fundamental seems to be broken inside our collective relationships with digital photo- and video-sharing platforms.
From Slate ● Jun. 24, 2019
They studied photo- graphs and technical drawings of the Vemork plant.
From "Bomb" by Steve Sheinkin
Trump wrote on social media, alongside photos of himself with Netanyahu in the Oval Office.
From Barron's ● Jul. 29, 2026
"It happened very quickly, because I was moving fast. My daughter was very hungry and she was telling me, 'Dad, stop taking photos, I've had enough,'" he said.
From Barron's ● Jul. 29, 2026
She says the app has come a long way since it first launched in the US in 2014, with machine learning systems which could identify 285 common bird species from photos.
From BBC ● Jul. 27, 2026
“At first, the new works were more nostalgic, with vintage photos and female ephemera, like gloves and such,” Saar said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 27, 2026
The photos on the film were of highly classified military documents.
From "Fallout: Spies, Superbombs, and the Ultimate Cold War Showdown" by Steve Sheinkin
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.
