frame

Etymology

From Middle English framen, fremen, fremmen (“to construct, build, strengthen, refresh, perform, execute, profit, avail”), from Old English framian, fremian, fremman (“to profit, avail, advance”), from Proto-West Germanic *frammjan, from Proto-Germanic *framjaną (“to perform, promote”), from Proto-Indo-European *promo- (“front, forward”). Cognate with Low German framen (“to commit, effect”), Danish fremme (“to promote, further, perform”), Swedish främja (“to promote, encourage, foster”), Icelandic fremja (“to commit”). More at from.

verb

1. (transitive) To fit, as for a specific end or purpose; make suitable or comfortable; adapt; adjust.
   I will hereafter frame myself to be coy. 1578, John Lyly, Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit
   We may in some measure frame our minds for the reception of happiness. 1828, Walter Savage Landor, Imaginary Conversations, Lord Brooke and Sir Philip Sidney
2. (transitive) To construct by fitting together or uniting various parts; fabricate by union of constituent parts.
3. (transitive) To bring or put into form or order; adjust the parts or elements of; compose; contrive; plan; devise.
   As for America’s constitution, speaking as the court’s originalist-in-chief, all that mattered was what its words meant when it was framed. 2016-02-20, “Obituary: Antonin Scalia: Always right”, in The Economist
4. (transitive) Of a constructed object such as a building, to put together the structural elements.
   Once we finish framing the house, we'll hang tin on the roof.
5. (transitive) Of a picture such as a painting or photograph, to place inside a decorative border.
6. (transitive) To position visually within a fixed boundary.
   The director frames the fishing scene very well.
7. (transitive) To construct in words so as to establish a context for understanding or interpretation.
   How would you frame your accomplishments?
   The way the opposition has framed the argument makes it hard for us to win.
   They have framed this sentencing bill as not caring about victims; we have to frame it as preventing government overreach.
8. (transitive, criminology) Conspire to falsely incriminate a presumably innocent person. See frameup.
   The gun had obviously been placed in her car in an effort to frame her.
9. (intransitive, dialectal, mining) To wash ore with the aid of a frame.
10. (intransitive, dialectal) To move.
11. (intransitive, obsolete) To proceed; to go.
12. (tennis) To hit (the ball) with the frame of the racquet rather than the strings (normally a mishit).
13. (transitive, obsolete) To strengthen; refresh; support.
14. (transitive, obsolete) To execute; perform.
    All have sworn him an oath that they should frame his will on earth.
15. (transitive, obsolete) To cause; to bring about; to produce.
16. (intransitive, obsolete) To profit; avail.
17. (intransitive, obsolete) To fit; accord.
    When thou hast turned them all ways, and done thy best to hew them and to make them frame, thou must be fain to cast them out. 1531, William Tyndale, An Answer unto Sir Thomas More's Dialogue
18. (intransitive, obsolete) To succeed in doing or trying to do something; manage.

noun

1. The structural elements of a building or other constructed object.
   Now that the frame is complete, we can start on the walls.
2. Anything composed of parts fitted and united together; a fabric; a structure.
3. The structure of a person's body; the human body.
   His starved flesh hung loosely on his once imposing frame.
   There they stood, ranged along the hillsides, met / To view the last of me, a living frame / For one more picture! […] 1855, Robert Browning, Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came, section XXXIV
   The high school had a send-off in my honour. It was an uncommon thing for a young man of Rajkot to go to England. I had written out a few words of thanks. But I could scarcely stammer them out. I remember how my head reeled and how my whole frame shook as I stood up to read them. 1927-29, M.K. Gandhi, The Story of My Experiments with Truth, translated 1940 by Mahadev Desai, Part I, Chapter xi
4. A rigid, generally rectangular mounting for paper, canvas or other flexible material.
   The painting was housed in a beautifully carved frame.
5. A piece of photographic film containing an image.
   12 July 2012, Sam Adams, AV Club Ice Age: Continental Drift If the audience had a nickel for every time a character on one side of the frame says something could never happen as it simultaneously happens on the other side of the frame, they’d have enough to pay the surcharge for the movie’s badly implemented 3-D.
   A film projector shows many frames in a single second.
6. A context for understanding or interpretation.
   In this frame, it's easy to ask the question that the investigators missed.
7. (snooker) A complete game of snooker, from break-off until all the balls (or as many as necessary to win) have been potted.
8. (networking) An independent chunk of data sent over a network.
9. (bowling) A set of balls whose results are added together for scoring purposes. Usually two balls, but only one ball in the case of a strike, and three balls in the case of a strike or a spare in the last frame of a game.
10. (bowling) The complete set of pins to be knocked down in their starting configuration.
    In knockemdowns and bowls ten pins are used, the centre one being called the king, and the ball has to be grounded before it reaches the frame. 1878, John Henry Walsh, British Rural Sports, page 712
11. (horticulture) A movable structure used for the cultivation or the sheltering of plants.
    a forcing-frame; a cucumber frame
12. (philately) The outer decorated portion of a stamp's image, often repeated on several issues although the inner picture may change.
13. (philately) The outer circle of a cancellation mark.
14. (electronics, film, animation, video games) A division of time on a multimedia timeline, such as 1/30th or 1/60th of a second.
15. (Internet) An individually scrollable region of a webpage.
16. (baseball, slang) An inning.
17. (engineering, dated, chiefly UK) Any of certain machines built upon or within framework.
    a stocking frame; a lace frame; a spinning frame
18. (dated) Frame of mind; disposition.
    to be always in a happy frame
    And I partook of the infinite calm in which she lay: my mind was never in a holier frame than while I gazed on that untroubled image of Divine rest. 1847, Emily Brontë, chapter XVI, in Wuthering Heights
19. (obsolete) Contrivance; the act of devising or scheming.
20. (dated, video games) A stage or location in a video game.
    When you play the game it will draw a set pattern depending on the frame you are on, with random additions to the pattern, to give a different orchard each time. 1982, Gilsoft International, Mongoose (video game instructions) [ftp://ftp.worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/games-info/m/Mongoose.txt]
    Hunchback looks very good, bright, cheerful and with a loud tune. I think it could have had a bit more sound during the frame though. 1984, "Hunchback" (video game review) in Crash (issue 2, pages 73-74)
    The first frame, funnily enough, brings just the sort of puzzle so rare in the remainder of the adventure whereby either it gets solved or you're left wandering excluded from where it's all happening. 1985, "Ashkeron!" (video game review) in Crash (issue 18, page 104)
21. (genetics, "reading frame") A way of dividing nucleotide sequences into a set of consecutive triplets.
22. (computing) A form of knowledge representation in artificial intelligence.
23. (mathematics) A complete lattice in which meets distribute over arbitrary joins.