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Definition of "portrait" []

  • A likeness of a person, especially one showing the face, that is created by a painter or photographer, for example. (noun)
  • A verbal picture or description, especially of a person. (noun)
  • Of or relating to the orientation of a page such that the longer side runs from top to bottom. (adjective)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Use "portrait" in a sentence
  • "Vallombrosa, which the said monk afterwards placed in an arbour covered with vines, regardless of the injuries of wind and rain -- Andrea, having some colours still left on his palette, took up a tile and called his wife to sit for her portrait, that all might see how well she had kept her good looks from her youth; but Lucrezia not being inclined to sit, he got a mirror and painted _his own portrait_ on the tile instead."
  • "Several are quite good, but the ultra-serious Nagin portrait is unintentionally hilarious."
  • "Droeshout's brass engraving is the title portrait on the first collected edition of Shakespeare's plays, the First Folio published in 1623, seven years after the playwright's death."