thumbnail

[thuhm-neyl]

noun

1. the nail of the thumb.

2. anything quite small or brief, as a small drawing or short essay.

3. Printing.,  a small, rough dummy.

4. Also called porkchop. Journalism, Printing.,  a half-column portrait in a newspaper.

adjective

1. quite small or brief; concise.

   a thumbnail description of Corsica.

verb (used with object)

1. to make a thumbnail sketch or description of.

thumbnail

/ ˈθʌmˌneɪl /

noun

1. the nail of the thumb

2. (modifier) concise and brief

   a thumbnail sketch

3. computing a small image which can be expanded

Word History and Origins

Origin of thumbnail¹

First recorded in 1595–1605; thumb + nail

Example Sentences

In fact, he tried that earlier this year - but faced a backlash from other creators when he released an AI tool which generated thumbnails for videos.

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There's also a historian who tracked his thumbnail growth for 35 years, and physics researchers exploring the mysteries of pasta sauce.

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The literature prize was posthumously given to William Bean, a medical historian who tracked the rate of growth of one of his thumbnails over 35 years and published a number of studies on the subject.

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"The spiderlings are about the size of a grain of sugar, and the adults are about the size of your thumbnail. So it's a very small world that you're in."

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The creator economy also has more specialized roles, such as thumbnail designers — people who create the images used to tease videos on sites including YouTube.

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