Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A decorative design placed at the beginning or end of a book or chapter of a book or along the border of a page.
- n. An unbordered picture, often a portrait, that shades off into the surrounding color at the edges.
- n. A short, usually descriptive literary sketch.
- n. A short scene or incident, as from a movie.
- v. To soften the edges of (a picture) in vignette style.
- v. To describe in a brief way.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A running ornament of vine-leaves, tendrils, and grapes, as in architecture.
- n. The flourishes in the form of vine-leaves, branches, etc., with which capital letters in manuscripts are sometimes surrounded.
- n. In printing, the engraved illustration or decoration that precedes a title-page or the beginning of a chapter: so called because many of the cuts first made for books in France were inclosed with a border of the general character of trailing vines.
- n. Hence, any image or picture; a cut or illustration.
- n. A photographic portrait showing only the head, or the head and shoulders, and so printed that the ground shades off insensibly around the subject into an even color, which may be that of the untreated paper, or a more or less dark shade produced by a separate operation; hence, any picture, not a portrait, treated in the same way.
- In photography, to treat or produce, as a portrait, in the style of a vignette.
Wiktionary
- n. architecture A running ornament consisting of leaves and tendrils, used in Gothic architecture.
- n. printing A decorative design, originally representing vine branches or tendrils, at the head of a chapter, of a manuscript or printed book, or in a similar position.
- n. by extension Any small borderless picture in a book, especially an engraving, photograph, or the like, which vanishes gradually at the edge.
- n. by extension A short story that presents a scene or tableau, or paints a picture.
- n. The small picture on a postage stamp.
- v. To make, as an engraving or a photograph, with a border or edge gradually fading away.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Arch.) A running ornament consisting of leaves and tendrils, used in Gothic architecture.
- n. A decorative design, originally representing vine branches or tendrils, at the head of a chapter, of a manuscript or printed book, or in a similar position; hence, by extension, any small picture in a book; hence, also, as such pictures are often without a definite bounding line, any picture, as an engraving, a photograph, or the like, which vanishes gradually at the edge.
- n. A picture, illustration, or depiction in words, esp. one of a small or dainty kind.
- v. To make, as an engraving or a photograph, with a border or edge insensibly fading away.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a small illustrative sketch (as sometimes placed at the beginning of chapters in books)
- n. a brief literary description
- n. a photograph whose edges shade off gradually
Etymologies
- First attested in 1751. From French vignette, diminutive of vigne ("vine"), from Latin vīnea, from vīnum ("wine"). Replaced earlier vinet. (Wiktionary)
- French, from Old French, diminutive of vigne, vine (from the use of vine tendrils in decorative borders); see vine. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Of the fourteen short sketches, it is difficult to measure one above the other; nevertheless, the title vignette,”
“And discovered that what I needed to be a 2k-word vignette is determined to be a 4k-word short story.”
“After all, a vignette is a simple character sketch, and Ballard himself has always been assaulted by critics for his poor characterization.”
Ballardian » ‘I really would not want to fuck George W. Bush!’: A Conversation with J.G. Ballard
“This vignette is as arresting as the toe-swallowing statue.”
“He saw them together on the Lido and (those writing fellows are horrible) he wrote what he calls a vignette (I suppose accidentally, too) under that very title.”
“Sony also ran a "Smooth Criminal" vignette from the disc showing Jackson "interact" with Rita Hayworth, Edward G. Robinson and Humphrey Bogart in classic black and white footage from Gilda and other old-time movies.”
“One vignette from a black gamer really struck me, and it's full of grist for the social science mill:”
A Black Gamer Speaks, Bryan Caplan | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty
“I may or may not be changing the title to "The Sea Witch," after discovering that's the correct name of the Frazetta painting upon which the vignette is based (also, it was painted in 1966, though not published until 1967).”
“Sony also ran a "Smooth Criminal" vignette from the disc showing Jackson "interact" with Rita Hayworth, Edward G. Robinson and Humphrey Bogart in classic black and white footage from”
“Because each and every new little vignette is still as wonderfully cute and entertaining as the one before it.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘vignette’.
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Additional 250 Spelling Words
Words for the diehard intermediate and advanced spellers
facetiae, sagittary, anthophilous, hydromancy, pandect, carillonneur, tabbouleh, litterateur, windgall, pinguid, tressure, moderne and 238 more...
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Language
word, sentence, novel, book, novella, vignette, memoir, anthology, paragraph, stanza, poem, haiku and 123 more...
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
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Film
jidaigeki, samurai, Kurosawa, action, comedy, drama, Bergman, Buñuel, surreal, rotoscope, melodrama, Cinerama and 333 more...
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EN-HU - important words for a HU inte...
Words only (I left out the expressions) from Geza Kerenyi's EN-HU interpreters' dictionary. Most of them pose some difficulty when interpreted between HU and EN in either or both directions.
abalone, abrasive, abstractionist, abstruse, abysmal, academia, accessibility, accessible, acclimate, accolade, accompanist, achiever and 1469 more...
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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big book gre
abase, abbess, abbey, abbot, abdicate, abdomen, abdominal, abduction, abed, aberration, abet, abeyance and 6691 more...
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All The Words
I enjoy collecting words, for I have no fear of them ever running out.
anacoluthon, defenestration, hypnopomp, hypnagogue, idioglossia, panopticon, tatterdemalion, abalone, caltrop, miasma, paroxysm, smalt and 476 more...
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Wordplay
reticent, slammerkin, moonstruck, zephyr, gallivant, hullabaloo, pandemonium, equestrian, wallflower, martyr, threadbare, treacherous and 180 more...
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Vocab
Words that I come across, and go blank, or want to clarify.
nefarious, edifice, malevolent, ostensible, folderol, bauble, livid, amnesty, calculus, saddlery, maisonette, cuisse and 423 more...
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newGRE
mostly from magoosh
imbue, verge on, nonchalant, deliberate, timorous, futile, provisional, dissect, checked, tinged, alluring, visionary and 1046 more...
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Stumbled Words
A list of words that I stumbled upon while reading.
penumbra, prolix, propitious, resplendence, sepulchral, Weltschmerz, apparition, brigand, probity, chalice, paroxysm, pallor and 160 more...
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Aequoria's list
affect, deleterious, nuance, pliant, verbatim, pertinent, latter, municipality, provincial, voyeuristic, circumlocution, wane and 798 more...
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Vocab++
Words as I learn them.
fetid, mezzanine, hiatus, austerity, subliminal, resplendent, implacable, impugn, debase, exiguous, cirque, holster and 2538 more...
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lanklenmot's Words
ineluctable, prelapsarian, bien pensant, prospero, preternatural, gratifying, iconoclast, cineast, persnickety, tumescent, galvanize, pap and 887 more...
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The Confidence Man
Words to remember from Melville's "The Confidence Man"
chevalier, hawk, unalloyed, ex-officio, scruple, pertinacity, epithet, gilt, bedizen, embrasure, escritoire, squaw and 278 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for vignette.

jwjarvis The case based model teaches through clinical vignettes. May 26, 2010
djsalinger Also applied to photography, in the often accidental darkening around the edge of a print. The type that makes the Lomo Compact Automat distinctive as an image making device. Mar 12, 2009
seanahan Interesting this evolved into the more common present day meeting. Feb 26, 2008
reesetee In illustrated books, an illustration unenclosed by a formal border. Feb 24, 2008