PICTURESQUE

Pronunciation (US): (GB):

I. (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Suggesting or suitable for a picture; pretty as a picture

Example:

a picturesque village

Classified under:

Adjectives

Similar:

beautiful (delighting the senses or exciting intellectual or emotional admiration)

Derivation:

picturesqueness (visually vivid and pleasing)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Strikingly expressive

Example:

a picturesque description of the rainforest

Classified under:

Adjectives

Similar:

colorful; colourful (striking in variety and interest)

Derivation:

picturesqueness (the quality of being strikingly expressive or vivid)

Credits

Context examples:

At the further end, very much at his ease amongst the aristocrats and exquisites who surrounded him, sat the Champion of England, his superb figure thrown back in his chair, a flush upon his handsome face, and a loose red handkerchief knotted carelessly round his throat in the picturesque fashion which was long known by his name.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Because it commands so excellent a view of that picturesque pile.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

This valley is more wonderful and sublime, but not so beautiful and picturesque as that of Servox, through which I had just passed.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

"Beth and I are going over to Kitty Bryant's to get more flowers for tomorrow," added Amy, tying a picturesque hat over her picturesque curls, and enjoying the effect as much as anybody.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

I know nothing of the picturesque.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

Some of them were just like the peasants at home or those I saw coming through France and Germany, with short jackets and round hats and home-made trousers; but others were very picturesque.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

We were now, as far as I could see, on a sort of common; but there were houses scattered all over the district; I felt we were in a different region to Lowood, more populous, less picturesque; more stirring, less romantic.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

In the present instance, she confessed and lamented her want of knowledge, declared that she would give anything in the world to be able to draw; and a lecture on the picturesque immediately followed, in which his instructions were so clear that she soon began to see beauty in everything admired by him, and her attention was so earnest that he became perfectly satisfied of her having a great deal of natural taste.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

I beg pardon—Ladies, Gentlemen, and Children—I must apologize, I had inadvertently omitted a considerable section of this audience (tumult, during which the Professor stood with one hand raised and his enormous head nodding sympathetically, as if he were bestowing a pontifical blessing upon the crowd), I have been selected to move a vote of thanks to Mr. Waldron for the very picturesque and imaginative address to which we have just listened.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

We are moving in high life, Watson, crackling paper, ‘E.B.’ monogram, coat-of-arms, picturesque address.