silhouette

silhouette

See also: Silhouette and silhouetté

English

A silhouette papercutting from 1771.

Photographic silhouette, taken at sunrise.

A silhouette of a skate.

Alternative forms

• silhouet

Etymology

Borrowed from French silhouette, from the name of Étienne de Silhouette (1709-1767), a French politician. His surname, in turn, is (gallicized) Basque, from Ziloeta or Zilhoeta, modern Basque Zulueta, from the local plural (see -ak) stern of zulo (“hole, cave”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˌsɪ.lʊˈwɛt/, /ˌsɪ.ləˈwɛt/, /ˌsɪ.luːˈwɛt/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɛt

Noun

silhouette (plural silhouettes)

1. An illustrated outline filled in with a solid color(s), usually only black, and intended to represent the shape of an object without revealing any other visual details; a similar appearance produced when the object being viewed is situated in relative darkness with brighter lighting behind it; a profile portrait in black, such as a shadow appears to be. [mid 19th c.]

   I could see a silhouette of a figure looking out from the window, but I couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman.

Translations

representation of the outlines of an object filled in with a black color

Afrikaans: silhoeët Albanian: siluetë (sq) Armenian: ուրվագիծ (hy) (urvagic) Basque: silueta Belarusian: сілуэт m (siluet) Bulgarian: силует (bg) m (siluet) Catalan: silueta f Chinese: Mandarin: 剪影 (zh) (jiǎnyǐng) Czech: silueta (cs) f Danish: silhuet c Dutch: silhouet (nl) n Esperanto: silueto Estonian: siluett Finnish: siluetti (fi), varjokuva French: silhouette (fr) f Galician: silueta f Georgian: სილუეტი (silueṭi) German: Silhouette (de) f, Schattenriss (de) m Greek: σιλουέτα (el) f (silouéta) Hebrew: צללית‎ f (tslalít) Hungarian: sziluett (hu) Icelandic: skuggamynd (is) f Ido: silueto (io) Indonesian: siluet (id) Irish: scáthchruth m Italian: silhouette (it) f, controluce (it), sagoma (it) Japanese: シルエット (ja) (shiruetto) Kazakh: сұлба (sūlba) Korean: 실루엣 (silluet) Latin: adumbrātiō f Latvian: siluets m Lithuanian: siluetas m Macedonian: силуета f (silueta) Malay: siluet Norwegian: Bokmål: silhuett (no) m Nynorsk: silhuett m Occitan: siloeta (oc) f Polish: zarys (pl), kontur (pl), sylwetka (pl) f Portuguese: contorno (pt) m, silhueta (pt) f Romanian: siluetă (ro) f Russian: силуэ́т (ru) m (siluét) Serbo-Croatian: Cyrillic: силуета f Roman: silueta (sh) f Slovak: silueta f Slovene: silhueta f Spanish: silueta (es) f Swedish: silhuett (sv) c, siluett (sv) c Turkish: silüet (tr) Ukrainian: силует (uk) m (syluet) Vietnamese: hình bóng, bóng (vi) Welsh: amlinell f, silwét m, cysgodlun m Yoruba: biribiri, ojiji biribiri

Verb

silhouette (third-person singular simple present silhouettes, present participle silhouetting, simple past and past participle silhouetted)

1. To represent by a silhouette; to project upon a background, so as to be like a silhouette. [late 19th c.]
   • 1929, Robert Dean Frisbee, The Book of Puka-Puka (republished by Eland, 2019; p. 35):

     Scores of coconut-shell fires blazed with their characteristic glaring white flame, throwing grotesque shadows on the brown thatched huts, dancing fairylike shimmerings among the domes of coconut fronds, casting ghostly reaches of light through the adjacent graveyards, and silhouetting the forms of pareu-clad natives at work cleaning their fish or laying them on the live coals to broil.

   • 1944 July and August, “Top Link Drivers: XXI—Driver H. Blunt, L.N.E.R.”, in Railway Magazine, page 226:

     Driving 2-6-2 locomotive No. 4771 Green Arrow, Blunt suddenly noticed that the tunnel mouth was silhouetted in a dazzling white glare and that incendiary bombs were showering down in their hundreds, he slammed on all his brakes and brought his train to a stop just inside the tunnel.

Further reading

• silhouette on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Étienne de Silhouette on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

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French

Etymology

From Silhouette, after Étienne de Silhouette, a French politician, from Basque.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /si.lwɛt/, /si.lu.ɛt/

• Audio (une silhouette)

  (file)

Noun

silhouette f (plural silhouettes)

1. silhouette

Descendants

• → Romanian: siluetă
• → Turkish: silüet

Verb

silhouette

1. inflection of silhouetter:
   1. first/third-person singular present indicative/subjunctive
   2. second-person singular imperative

Further reading

• “silhouette”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.