Portrayal

How to spell portrayal

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce portrayal

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does portrayal mean?

1. nounA depiction or representation of someone or something, especially in a performance, painting, or piece of writing.

Portrayal in a sentence

• Her portrayal of the grieving widow earned the actress an award.

• The novel offers a vivid portrayal of life in a coal-mining town.

Where does portrayal come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb protrahere, which literally meant 'to draw forth' or 'to drag out', built from pro 'forward' and trahere 'to draw or pull'. The same trahere root quietly survives in everyday words like 'tractor', 'attract' and 'subtract', all of which involve pulling or drawing something. The Latin verb passed into Old French as portraire, meaning 'to draw, paint or depict', since making a likeness was thought of as drawing the lines of a face forth onto a surface. English took the verb 'portray' from this French source in the 1300s, and the noun 'portrayal' was formed much later, around the early 1800s, by adding the English noun-forming suffix -al. Remembering that 'portrayal' is simply 'portray' plus '-al' is the key to the spelling, since the verb keeps its full -ay spelling before the suffix is attached.

How the word is built

• por- (forth, from Latin pro-)
• -tray (from trahere: to draw, drag)
• -al (noun suffix)