Imagery

How to spell imagery

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce imagery

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does imagery mean?

1. nounVisual pictures or images considered as a group, or the figurative descriptions a writer uses to evoke vivid mental pictures.

Imagery in a sentence

• The satellite imagery helped the team map the flood damage.

• The poem relies on ocean imagery to convey a sense of loss.

Where does imagery come from?

Language of origin: French

This word traces back to the Latin imago, which meant a likeness, a picture, or a copy of something, the same root that gives us 'image' and 'imagine'. English took it not directly from Latin but through Old French, where imagerie referred to carved figures or pictures, a body of representations gathered together. The French ending, which English smoothed into '-ery', originally signalled a whole collection or class of things, so imagery literally meant 'a set of images'. It entered English in the 1300s, at first describing actual sculptures and decorative figures, before drifting toward the modern senses of pictures in general and, by extension, the vivid word-pictures a writer paints in the mind. That French '-erie' origin is exactly why the spelling keeps the 'e' before the 'ry', the trap that makes writers want to drop it.

How the word is built

• imag- (from Latin imago: likeness, picture)
• -ery (noun suffix denoting a collection or body of)