silhouette

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   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.

   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.

2. 2
   noun

   The outline of a garment as it appears on the wearer.

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

3. 3
   verb

   To represent by a silhouette; to project upon a background, so as to be like a silhouette.

   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.

4. 4
   noun

   a drawing of the outline of an object

5. 5
   noun

   an outline of a solid object (as cast by its shadow)

6. 6
   verb

   represent by a silhouette

7. 7
   verb

   project on a background, such as a screen, like a silhouette

Etymology

Borrowed from French silhouette, after Étienne de Silhouette (1709–1767), French Controller of Finances. De Silhouette's penny-pinching led to the French term à la Silhouette, applied to things perceived as cheap or austere, such as an outline filled only with black. Étienne de Silhouette's surname is, in turn, gallicized Basque. It derives from Ziloeta or Zilhoeta, modern Basque Zulueta, from the local plural (see -ak) stem of zulo (“hole, cave”).