silhouette

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“
It is hardly necessary to mention that the sitter must keep perfectly still if the silhouette is to be at all accurate The tracing is cut round with fine-pointed scissors, and the paper blacked and stuck on a piece of white card.

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Definitions (13)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (3)

  1. noun A drawing consisting of the outline of something, especially a human profile, filled in with a solid color.
  2. noun An outline that appears dark against a light background. See Synonyms at outline.
  3. transitive verb To cause to be seen as a silhouette; outline: Figures were silhouetted against the setting sun.

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (4)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (2)

Toggle WordNet definitions WordNet (4)

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Examples (43)

  • When she falls her silhouette is as sharp and black as the wave shadows, a black slash piercing a hyphenated surface. —  Omni: June 1993
  • He tried to make out details he might use later to recognize her under other circumstances, but her silhouette was as empty as a doorway into a starless sky, with only little wisps of reflected light peeking through her spiky hair like bursts of solar flares. —  Omni: May 1993
  • This silhouette is already the artifact of a girl who has moved on, but this is not obvious from the picture. —  FSFOct/Nov2004
  • In addition to its classic styling and graceful silhouette, the Kara offers precise Swiss quartz movement and a highly scratch-resistant sapphire crystal. —  We Blog A Lot
  • ModernGearTV wrote: I love the silhouette, and the print, … - —  The Budget Fashionista
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Related

Roget's II Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

Allen's Allen's Synonyms and Antonyms

Used in the same context Used in the Same Context

outline ·  blur ·  spire ·  contour ·  apparition ·  rectangle ·  torso ·  shape ·  shimmer ·  hulk ·  expanse ·  speck

Used in the same contextWord Family

silhouette:   silhouettes
Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (3)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. French, after Étienne de Silhouette (1709-1767), French finance minister.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (2)

  1. =D, Danish silhouet =Swedish G. silhuett, from French silhouette, a profile portrait in black, so called after Étienne de Silhouette, French minister of finance in 1759, whose rigid public economy, intended to avert national bankruptcy, caused his name to be applied to things cheap, especially to things made ostentatiously cheap in derision of him.
  2. from . silhouette, n.
 

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/sɪluˈɛt/
by American Heritage

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