Picture

How to spell picture

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce picture

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does picture mean?

1. nounA painting, drawing, photograph, or other visual representation of something.
2. verbTo form a mental image of something; to imagine.

Picture in a sentence

• noun

  The picture on the wall shows a quiet coastal village.

• verb

  Try to picture the kitchen with the cabinets repainted white.

• noun

  She kept a faded picture of her grandparents in her wallet.

• verb

  He could clearly picture the finished garden before any work began.

Where does picture come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin pictura, meaning 'the art of painting' or 'a painting', which was formed from the verb pingere, 'to paint, embroider, or decorate'. The past participle of that verb was pictus, and the same -pict- element survives in relatives such as 'depict' and 'pictorial'. English took the word in during the 1400s, at first describing an actual painted image and later widening to cover any visual representation, including photographs and, eventually, mental images. The spelling trap lives in that Latin -ture ending, pronounced like a soft 'cher', which makes writers want to spell it the way they hear it; remembering the painting root pict- keeps the 'ct' firmly in place. The verb sense, meaning to form an image in the mind, grew naturally from the noun once a picture was understood as something one could conjure as well as hang on a wall.

How the word is built

• pict- (from Latin pingere: to paint)
• -ure (noun-forming suffix)