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:
He took a photo of them on the slope, small silhouettes against the snow.
From BBC ● Sep. 11, 2026
Snap a photo of her eating and submit your data to the Wasp Picnic Survey 2026: Ham or Jam?.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 11, 2026
He clutched a photo of his late wife that had been enlarged for the television cameras.
From Salon ● Sep. 11, 2026
Finding it peculiar, she posted a photo on Facebook and asked if anyone could help identify it.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 10, 2026
It was hard to imagine the small baby in the photo as himself, even though all the information was correct.
From "The Way to Rio Luna" by Zoraida Cordova
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
Still, the rest of the ByteDance portfolio is no joke, encompassing various games, photo- and video-editing tools, news aggregators, and even virtual reality software across continents.
From Slate ● Mar. 22, 2023
In our testing, it handled intense photo- and video-editing workloads better than almost any Intel-powered thin-and-light laptop we’ve tried this year.
From The Verge ● Jul. 22, 2022
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
They studied photo- graphs and technical drawings of the Vemork plant.
From "Bomb" by Steve Sheinkin
The “Bad Romance” singer and 16-time Grammy winner was seen wearing a large ring and holding the child, supported by a baby wrap, tightly to her chest, according to photos published by the outlet.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 12, 2026
Anyone wearing smart glasses can take photos, film videos, listen to music, make phone calls, translate text or interact with an AI assistant, with sales now hitting the millions.
From Barron's ● Sep. 12, 2026
Treasured photos of family members, destroyed forever - those are among the key possessions which Sandy and Uttam Shiralkar say they will never hold again.
From BBC ● Sep. 11, 2026
The photos humanize Coltrane while intensifying his myth as someone in holy communion with the transcendent.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 11, 2026
There are photos of her everywhere, making this both my favorite and least favorite room in the house.
From "Split the Sky" by Marie Arnold
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.
