Pictures

How to spell pictures

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce pictures

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does pictures mean?

1. nounVisual representations such as paintings, drawings, or photographs.
2. verbForms a mental image of something; imagines it vividly.

Pictures in a sentence

• noun

  The framed pictures on the hallway wall need straightening.

• verb

  He often pictures the finished kitchen before buying any materials.

• noun

  She sorted the holiday pictures into folders on her laptop.

• verb

  She pictures herself living by the coast once she retires.

Where does pictures come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin pictura, meaning 'a painting' or 'the art of painting', which itself was formed from pingere, the verb 'to paint'. The same painterly root surfaces in a family of relatives, including 'pigment', 'depict', and the Italian 'pinta'. English took 'picture' in during the late 1300s, when it referred to a painted or drawn representation, and only much later did it stretch to cover photographs, films ('the pictures'), and mental images. The spelling preserves the Latin -ura ending as the -ture seen in many borrowings such as 'nature' and 'feature', so the trap is hearing the soft 'cher' sound and remembering it is written -tures, not -chers. The plural simply adds -s to that stable stem.

How the word is built

• pict- (from pingere: to paint)
• -ure (noun-forming suffix)
• -s (plural/third-person marker)