Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A thin skin or membrane.
  • noun A thin, opaque, abnormal coating on the cornea of the eye.
  • noun A thin covering or coating.
  • noun A thin, flexible, transparent sheet, as of plastic, used in wrapping or packaging.
  • noun A thin sheet or strip of flexible material, such as a cellulose derivative or a thermoplastic resin, coated with a photosensitive emulsion and used to make photographic negatives or transparencies.
  • noun A thin sheet or strip of developed photographic negatives or transparencies.
  • noun A movie, especially one recorded on film.
  • noun The presentation of such a work.
  • noun A long, narrative movie.
  • noun Movies collectively, especially when considered as an art form.
  • noun A coating of magnetic alloys on glass used in manufacturing computer storage devices.
  • intransitive verb To cover with or as if with a film.
  • intransitive verb To record on film or video using a movie camera.
  • intransitive verb To become coated or obscured with or as if with a film.
  • intransitive verb To make or shoot scenes for a movie.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A very thin skin or membrane; a pellicle; an attenuated layer, lamina, or sheet of any substance: as, a membranous or watery film over the eye; a film of oil or gelatin; a film of lace, gauze, etc.; a film of air between two plates.
  • noun Specifically In photography: The coating on a plate mechanically and chemically prepared to serve as a medium for taking a picture, either before or after it has been sensitized: as, the collodion film of the wet plate, or the gelatin film of the dry plate.
  • noun A skin or film, usually composed in great part of gelatin, made to serve as a medium for receiving a picture, as that described under
  • noun but so prepared as to be independent of any supporting plate, or to admit of being stripped intact from such a plate.
  • noun A fine thread, as of a cobweb.
  • To cover with a film, or thin skin or pellicle.
  • To become covered by a film; become obscured, as if covered by a film.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A thin skin; a pellicle; a membranous covering, causing opacity.
  • noun hence, any thin layer covering a surface.
  • noun A slender thread, as that of a cobweb.
  • noun (Photog.) The layer, usually of gelatin or collodion, containing the sensitive salts of photographic plates.
  • noun (Photog.) a flexible sheet of celluloid or other plastic material to which a light-sensitive layer has been applied, used for recording images by the processes of photography. It is commonly used in rolls mounted within light-proof canisters suitable for simple insertion into cameras designed for such canisters. On such rolls, varying numbers of photographs may be taken before the canister needs to be replaced.
  • noun a motion picture.
  • noun the art of making motion pictures; -- used mostly in the phrase the film.
  • noun a thin transparent sheet of plastic, used for wrapping objects.
  • noun (Photog.) a thin flexible sheet of celluloid, coated with a sensitized emulsion of gelatin, and used as a substitute for photographic plates.
  • noun (Photog.) a celluloid film cut into pieces suitable for use in a camera.
  • transitive verb To cover with a thin skin or pellicle.
  • transitive verb to make a motion picture of (any event or literary work); to record with a movie camera.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A thin layer of some substance.
  • noun photography A medium used to capture images in a camera.
  • noun A motion picture.
  • verb To record a motion picture on photographic film
  • verb To cover with a thin skin or pellicle.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a thin coating or layer
  • verb record in film
  • verb make a film or photograph of something
  • noun a medium that disseminates moving pictures
  • noun a form of entertainment that enacts a story by sound and a sequence of images giving the illusion of continuous movement
  • noun a thin sheet of (usually plastic and usually transparent) material used to wrap or cover things
  • noun photographic material consisting of a base of celluloid covered with a photographic emulsion; used to make negatives or transparencies

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from Old English filmen; see pel- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English filme, from Old English filmen ("film, membrane, thin skin, foreskin"), from Proto-Germanic *filminjan (“thin skin, membrane”) (compare Proto-Germanic *felma- (“skin, hide”)), from Proto-Indo-European *pélno-mo (“membrane”), from Proto-Indo-European *pel(w)-, *plē(w)-, *péln- (“skin, hide”). Cognate with Old Frisian filmene ("thin skin, human skin"), Dutch vel ("sheet, skin"), German Fell ("skin, hide, fur"), Swedish fjäll ("fur blanket, cloth, scale"), Norwegian fille ("rag, cloth"), Lithuanian plėvē 'membrane, scab', Russian plevá 'membrane', Greek pélma 'foot sole'. More at fell. Sense of a thin coat of something is 1577, extended by 1845 to the coating of chemical gel on photographic plates. By 1895 this also meant the coating plus the paper or celluloid.

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Examples

  • Apart from being the first instance in 24 years of a work by Philip K. Dick being adapted into something other than an action film, A Scanner Darkly is probably best known for utilizing a rotoscoping animating technique, in which animation is superimposed over live film**.

    A Saturday Afternoon Double Feature Abigail Nussbaum 2006

  • Still like his film score for Jim Jarmusch's _film _Dead Man_ best, and the Wire work after that, but a music concert film so well-filmed I kept wanting to applaud with the crowd after every song.

    [film] Neil Young: Heart of Gold badger 2006

  • Apart from being the first instance in 24 years of a work by Philip K. Dick being adapted into something other than an action film, A Scanner Darkly is probably best known for utilizing a rotoscoping animating technique, in which animation is superimposed over live film**.

    Archive 2006-10-01 Abigail Nussbaum 2006

  • OK, perhaps its a bit cruel to suggest that Disney's first 3D computer animated film under the management of John Pixar Lasseter is a calculated smoothie of every Pixar film* squeezed through a Disney anodyne making machine.

    FreakyTrigger 2009

  • As a film maker, it is important to me to have * the film* seen by the public, especially in Indonesia * as one of my main targeted audiences*, "he said.

    The Jakarta Post Breaking News 2009

  • “Some people connect the term film noir,” writes Kenneth Turan, film critic for the Los Angeles Times, “to the famous yellow-and-black Série Noire series of translations of American writers like Chandler and Hammett published by Gallimard.”

    The Right Word in the Right Place at the Right Time William Safire 2004

  • “Some people connect the term film noir,” writes Kenneth Turan, film critic for the Los Angeles Times, “to the famous yellow-and-black Série Noire series of translations of American writers like Chandler and Hammett published by Gallimard.”

    The Right Word in the Right Place at the Right Time William Safire 2004

  • Your remarks on the vogue for the term film noir seem to imply that it was casually created by a bunch of movie critics operating in their pretentious twit mode.

    No Uncertain Terms William Safire 2003

  • Your remarks on the vogue for the term film noir seem to imply that it was casually created by a bunch of movie critics operating in their pretentious twit mode.

    No Uncertain Terms William Safire 2003

  • Your remarks on the vogue for the term film noir seem to imply that it was casually created by a bunch of movie critics operating in their pretentious twit mode.

    No Uncertain Terms William Safire 2003

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