depict - Wiktionary, the free dictionary (original) (raw)

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

From Middle English depicten, from Latin dēpictus, from dēpingō.

depict (third-person singular simple present depicts, present participle depicting, simple past and past participle depicted)

  1. To render a representation of something, using words, sounds, images, or other means. [from early 15th c.]
    Synonyms: portray, express, exhibit, register, show, describe, bespeak, visualise, draw, render, depicture
    • 1639, Thomas Fuller, The Historie of the Holy Warre‎[1], Cambridge, Book 4, Chapter 12, p. 189:
      And by [these Embassadours] he sent to their master a Tent, wherein the history of the Bible was as richly as curiously depicted in needle-work;
    • 1770, Thomas Chatterton, The Auction, a Poem: A Familiar Epistle to a Friend‎[2], London: George Kearsly:
      The Spring, when all its beauties rise,
      I see depicted in your eyes
    • 1851, George Borrow, chapter XXIV, in Lavengro; the Scholar—the Gypsy—the Priest. […], volume II, London: John Murray […], →OCLC, page 212:
      At first, I believe, I answered her very incoherently, for I observed alarm beginning to depict itself upon her countenance.
    • 1984, Lawrence Starr, “Toward a Reevaluation of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess”, in American Music, volume 2, number 2, page 27:
      The well-known words depict a woman seeking sanctuary in a love relationship form a brutal, rapacious man.
    • 1987, Niall O'Loughlin, “Music Reviews: 20th-century guitar”, in The Musical Times, volume 128, number 1734, page 443:
      Here the music depicts the delicate pattern of ice on windows.
    • 1994, E. Pennisi, "Breathe (xenon) deeply to see lungs clearly," Science News, vol. 146, no. 5, p. 70 (caption),
      False-color computer images depict lungs removed from a mouse.

depict (not comparable)

  1. (obsolete) Depicted.
    • Early 1400s, John Lydgate, “The Concords of Company” in James Orchard Halliwell (ed.), A Selection from the Minor Poems of Dan John Lydgate, London: The Percy Society, 1840, p. 177,[3]
      I fond a lyknesse depict upon a wal,
      Armed in vertues, as I walk up and doun,
      The hed of thre ful solempne and roial,
      Intellectus, memorye, and resoun;