sculpture

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. The art or practice of shaping figures or designs in the round or in relief, as by chiseling marble, modeling clay, or casting in metal.
2. n. A work of art created by sculpture.
3. n. Such works of art considered as a group.
4. n. Ridges, indentations, or other markings, as on a shell, formed by natural processes.
5. v. To fashion (stone, bronze, or wood, for example) into a three-dimensional figure.
6. v. To represent in sculpture.
7. v. To ornament with sculpture.
8. v. To change the shape or contour of, as by erosion.
9. v. To make sculptures or a sculpture.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. The act or art of graving or carving; the art of shaping figures or other objects in the round or in relief out of or upon stone or other more or less hard substances. Besides the cutting of forms in marble, stone, wood, etc., the ancient chryselephantine work, etc., it includes modeling in clay, wax, etc., and casting in bronze or any other metal. Sculpture includes also the designing of coins and medals, and glyptics, or the art of gem-engraving. See cut-in next column, and cuts under Assyrian, Chaldean, Egyptian, Greek, Passitelean, Peloponnesian, Phidian, and Rhodian.
2. n. Carved work; any work of sculpture, as a figure or an inscription cut in wood, stone, metal, or other solid substance.
3. n. An engraving; an illustration.
4. n. In zoöl., markings resulting from irregularity of surface or difference in texture of a part; tracery: as, the sculpture of an insect's wing-covers; the sculpture of the plates or shields of a fish; the sculpture of a turtle's shell. The term specially indicates in entomology the arrangement or disposition of such markings, as by furrows, striæ, tubercles, punctures, etc., or the pattern of the resulting ornamentation; it is much used in describing beetles, and all the leading forms of sculpture have technical descriptive names. Also sculpturing.
5. n. See the qualifying words.
6. To represent in sculpture; carve; grave; form with the chisel or other tool on or in wood, stone, or metal.
7. To ornament or cover with sculpture or carved work; carve.
8. n. In physical geography, the change of land-forms by natural erosive processes.
9. In physical geography, to change the forms of (the land) by natural erosive processes.

Wiktionary

1. n. uncountable The art of shaping figures or designs in the round or in relief, professionally performed by a sculptor
2. n. countable A work of art created by sculpting.
3. n. Works of art created by sculpting, as a group.
4. v. To fashion something into a three-dimensional figure.
5. v. To represent something in sculpture.
6. v. To change the shape of a land feature by erosion etc.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. The art of carving, cutting, or hewing wood, stone, metal, etc., into statues, ornaments, etc., or into figures, as of men, or other things; hence, the art of producing figures and groups, whether in plastic or hard materials.
2. n. Carved work modeled of, or cut upon, wood, stone, metal, etc.
3. v. To form with the chisel on, in, or from, wood, stone, or metal; to carve; to engrave.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. creating figures or designs in three dimensions
2. v. create by shaping stone or wood or any other hard material
3. n. a three-dimensional work of plastic art
4. v. shape (a material like stone or wood) by whittling away at it