portrait
Americannoun
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a likeness of a person, especially of the face, as a painting, drawing, or photograph.
a gallery of family portraits.
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a verbal picture or description, usually of a person.
a biography that provides a fascinating portrait of an 18th-century rogue.
adjective
noun
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a painting, drawing, sculpture, photograph, or other likeness of an individual, esp of the face
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( as modifier )
a portrait gallery
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a verbal description or picture, esp of a person's character
adjective
Other Word Forms
- portraitlike adjective
Etymology
Origin of portrait
1560–70; < Middle French: a drawing, image, etc., noun use of past participle of portraire to portray
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.
The coin found in Midlothian has a portrait of the monarch's head on one side and a cross-based design on the other.
From BBC
He had come to vote at Notre Dame college in the Plateau district, where voters queued in a hall below a huge portrait of Felix Houphouet-Boigny, the west African nation's founding president.
From Barron's
Images of the incumbent have flooded the capital, with neon signs, giant portraits and T-shirts bearing his likeness seen everywhere on the streets.
From Barron's
But their emphasis here presents Man Ray, who was a talented portrait photographer, as an experimentalist chasing rather than creating imagery.
In John Knowles’s portrait of the boys’ Arcadian lives, World War II seems very far away.
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.
