picture
picture
/ˈpɪktʃə(r)/
painting/drawing
1 countable a painting or drawing, etc. that shows a scene, a person or thing He likes books with lots of pictures in them.
picture of somebody/something A picture of flowers hung on the wall.
The children were drawing pictures of their pets.
She wanted a famous artist to paint her picture (= a picture of herself).
photograph
to take a picture
We had our picture taken in front of the hotel.
The picture shows the couple together on their yacht.
picture of somebody/something She posted a picture of the two of them on her Facebook page.
Have you got any pictures of your trip?
The star shared the picture on Twitter.
to upload/send/tweet a picture
Collocations
adjective
verb + picture
picture + verb
picture + noun
preposition
in a/the picture
picture of
on TV
3 countable picture (of somebody/something) an image on a television screen harrowing television pictures of the famine
You are looking at live pictures of midtown Manhattan.
poor picture quality
Collocations
adjective
verb + picture
picture + verb
description
We've only got scraps of information, not the full picture.
picture of something The writer paints a gloomy picture of the economy.
a bleak/grim picture of the future
a clear/an accurate/a complete picture of these events
The police are trying to build up a picture of what happened.
From news reports a picture emerges of a country in crisis.
The TV report painted a much rosier picture of the employment situation than research shows to be the case.
mental image
I have a vivid picture of my grandfather smiling down at me when I was very small.
He uses imagery to form mental pictures within the mind of the reader.
general situation
6 the picture singular the general situation relating to somebody/something Just a few years ago the picture was very different.
The overall picture for farming is encouraging.
The documentary was interesting but it didn't give the full picture.
movies
The movie won nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture.
in pictures (especially North American English) I believe her husband's in pictures (= he acts in movies or works in the movie industry).
Collocations
adjective
8 the pictures plural (old-fashioned, informal) the cinema Shall we go to the pictures tonight?
Idioms
picture
/ˈpɪktʃə(r)/
imagine
1 to imagine somebody/something; to create an image of somebody/something in your mind
picture somebody/something I could picture the scene clearly.
I can still picture the house I grew up in.
picture somebody/something as something We found it hard to picture him as the father of teenage sons.
picture somebody/something doing something When he did not come home she pictured him lying dead on the roadside somewhere.
picture what, how, etc… I tried to picture what it would be like to live alone.
describe
2 often passive to describe or present somebody/something in a particular way be pictured as something Before the trial Liz had been pictured as a frail woman dominated by her husband.
show in photograph
be pictured (+ adv./prep./adj.) She is pictured here with her parents.
be pictured doing something The team is pictured setting off on their European tour.
Word Origin
late Middle English: from Latin pictura, from pict- ‘painted’ (from the verb pingere).