picture

Etymology

From Middle English pycture, from Old French picture, itself from Latin pictūra (“the art of painting, a painting”), from pingō (“I paint”). Doublet of pictura.

noun

1. A representation of anything (as a person, a landscape, a building) upon canvas, paper, or other surface, by drawing, painting, printing, photography, etc.
   Drawings and pictures are more than mere ornaments in scientific discourse. Blackboard sketches, geological maps, diagrams of molecular structure, astronomical photographs, MRI images, the many varieties of statistical charts and graphs: These pictorial devices are indispensable tools for presenting evidence, for explaining a theory, for telling a story. 2012-03, Brian Hayes, “Pixels or Perish”, in American Scientist, volume 100, number 2, page 106
2. An image; a representation as in the imagination.
   My eyes make pictures when they are shut. 1828, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, A Day Dream
   Prior to seeing him and meeting him, and hearing him speak, I had conjured up a picture of him in my mind, which actual contact with him proved to be an illusion. I had conceived of him[…]as being tall, commanding, and as the advance notices of him, a sliver-tongued orator. I found him, however, to be the opposite of my mental picture; short, squat, unpretentious[…]. 2007, The Workers' Republic
3. A painting.
   There was a picture hanging above the fireplace.
   Here the stripped panelling was warmly gold and the pictures, mostly of the English school, were mellow and gentle in the afternoon light. 1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 3, in The China Governess
4. A photograph.
   I took a picture of the church.
   Pictures of Lily made my life so wonderful / Pictures of Lily helped me sleep at night 1967, “Pictures of Lily”, performed by The Who
   I've been looking so long at these pictures of you / That I almost believe that they're real 1989, “Pictures of You”, in Disintegration, performed by The Cure
5. (informal, dated) A motion picture.
   Casablanca is my all-time favorite picture.
   "You make moving pictures. In jungles and places." "That's me. And I've picked you for the lead in my next picture." 1932, Delos W. Lovelace, King Kong, published 1965, page 13
6. (in the plural, informal) ("the pictures") Cinema (as a form of entertainment).
   Let's go to the pictures.
7. A paragon, a perfect example or specimen (of a category).
   She's the very picture of health.
   Franklin Delano Roosevelt was in poor health for much of his presidency, even though his doctors, his family, and even journalists colluded to portray him as the picture of health. 2018, Sandeep Jauhar, Heart: a History, page 114
8. An attractive sight.
   The garden is a real picture at this time of year.
   it was heartening to see a young Indian football team Mata had invited to Manchester. His face was a picture when he listened to the little footballers sing a team song for him. January 1, 2018, Donald McRae, “The Guardian footballer of the year 2017: Juan Mata”, in the Guardian
9. The art of painting; representation by painting.
   any well-expressed image[…]either in picture or sculpture 1862, Henry Barnard, “Sir Henry Wotton”, in American Journal of Education
10. A figure; a model.
11. Situation.
    The employment picture for the older middle class is not so good.
    You can't just look at the election, you've got to look at the big picture.
12. (MLE) A sample of an illegal drug.
    If you want me to buy your weed I’ll need a picture.
13. (programming) A format string in the COBOL programming language.
    The COBOL restriction for the currency symbol in a picture string to be replaced by a single character currency symbol is a compromise solution. 1997, John Barnes, Ada 95 Rationale: The Language - The Standard Libraries, page 390
    To recapitulate, the pictures we have considered so far are: X – any character A — alphabetic characters and the space character […] 1997, Roger Hutty, Mary Spence, Mastering COBOL Programming, page 20

verb

1. (transitive) To represent in or with a picture.
   What is striking about the self portrait is that the patient had pictured herself as a much younger woman 1966, Margaret Naumburg, Dynamically oriented art therapy, page 154
   while upon the shaded top of the box, drawn in perspective, the artist had pictured a plate with the beautifully executed, twin-lobed, brainlike, halved kernel of a walnut. 1962, Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire, page 130
   Anyone "skilled in the art" could see from their language that Lemp and Wightman had not invented or patented the invention their draftsman had pictured. 1999, Lisa Gitelman, Scripts, grooves, and writing machines, page 107
2. (transitive) To imagine or envision.
   Picture yourself on a boat on a river / With tangerine trees and marmalade skies 1967, Lennon–McCartney (lyrics and music), “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”, in Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
   If you can picture this—a day in December / Picture this—freezing cold weather / You got clouds on your lids and you'd be on the skids 1978, “Picture This”, in Debbie Harry (lyrics), Parallel Lines, performed by Blondie
3. (transitive) To depict or describe vividly.
   I had never found him so impossible to soften or to move. I tried this way and I tried that; I pictured his future in an English gaol; I described the sorrow of his mother when I came back with the news; I said everything to touch his heart, but all to no purpose. 1898, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Man with the Watches
   Drawing is picturing people, places, and things with line. 1985, Edmund Burke Feldman, Thinking about art, page 252
   Many rock paintings picture various species of fish. 1989, Jan Jelínek, The great art of the early Australians, page 490
   A plain, seemingly graceless stylist, his rather unpalatable movies, full of rabid, sloggingly orchestrated physical pain and psychic damage, picture crime as a monstrous, miasmal evil, divesting it of any glamour it ever had. 2003, Jack Shadoian, Dreams and Dead Ends: The American Gangster Film, page 196
   The sketch pictured here takes in the whole scene. 2004, Helen South, The everything drawing book, page 75