silhouette

noun

1. 1

   An artistic depiction, often of a person's profile, in the form of an outline without any other visual details, similar to a shadow, made by cutting a piece of black paper, filling in an outline with a solid colour (usually black), etc.

   She had a feeble pencil drawing of the vicarage in Dorsetshire, and silhouettes of her father and mother, which were hung up in the lodgings wherever she went.

   [A] portion of the John Boyd Thatcher^([sic]) collection of commissions, documents, autograph letters and portraits; a case containing silhouets of famous Colonial personages, a silhouet ring, some smoked silhouets, […]

2. 2

   A dark outline of someone or something seen against a brighter background.

   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.

   All we could see were ghostly-looking silhouettes of ships gliding here and there through the clouds; and I am sure the coachman's remark was quite correct, that it was a pity the day was so misty.

   Entering the gate and passing the shrubs, the silhouette of a house rose to view; black, low, and rather long: but the guiding light shone nowhere. All was obscurity.

   Another second and I saw the black silhouette of the old Zulu raise its arm in mute salute, and Nyleptha was before us.

3. 3

   An outline of a garment as it appears on a wearer.

   A-line is a classic silhouette for dresses and skirts.

   Dresses have departed from the straight-line severity of last season and show great diversity of design. One may choose the semi-princess silhouet or the flared peplum, the bloused silhouet, the bolero or the caplet effects.

4. 4

   figurativeA brief written description of someone or something; an outline, a sketch.

   [A]t my elbow stood a tall man, young, though probably five or six years older than I—in other respects of an appearance the opposite to common-place; though just now, as I am not disposed to paint his portrait in detail, the reader must be content with the silhouette I have just thrown off; […]

verb

1. 1

   Often followed by against or upon: to depict (oneself or someone, or something) as a silhouette (noun sense 1 or noun sense 2.1); to project (oneself or someone, or something) upon a background, so as to be like a silhouette.

   We guided ourselves, by the fitful flashes of forked and sheet lightning combined, towards a ghostly point, whose deeper blackness silhouetted it against the shades.

   [N]ot only the passing figure of the young girl was seen, but the dazzling green and gold of the hillside, and the far-off silhouetted crests of the Coast Range.

   Scores of coconut-shell fires blazed with their characteristic glaring white flame, throwing grotesque shadows on the brown thatched huts, dancing in 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.

   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.

2. 2

   To appear as a silhouette.

   [T]he distant islands […] lay dark and massive across our path, their huge crowns silhouetting in clear-cut outlines against the eastern sky, […]

Forms

plural

silhouettes

past tense

silhouetted

past participle

silhouetted

present participle

silhouetting

third person singular

silhouettes