Definition of "sculpture" []

• The art or practice of shaping figures or designs in the round or in relief, as by chiseling marble, modeling clay, or casting in metal. (noun)
• A work of art created by sculpture. (noun)
• Such works of art considered as a group. (noun)
• Ridges, indentations, or other markings, as on a shell, formed by natural processes. (noun)
• To fashion (stone, bronze, or wood, for example) into a three-dimensional figure. (verb-transitive)

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.

• "Two and a half centuries of classical-art scholarship have given curators an array of reliable tools with which to assess whether a sculpture is a Greek original, a Roman copy, or a latter-day forgery."
• "This sculpture is about twenty-seven hundred years old, and is of peculiar interest as a striking testimony from Egypt to the truth of Scripture history."
• "Mr. Chamberlain felt that even the word "sculpture" was limiting in describing art that, while functioning in three dimensions, could be made from almost anything."