VIGNETTE

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does vignette mean? 

• VIGNETTE (noun)
  The noun VIGNETTE has 3 senses:

1. a brief literary description

2. a photograph whose edges shade off gradually

3. a small illustrative sketch (as sometimes placed at the beginning of chapters in books)

  Familiarity information: VIGNETTE used as a noun is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• VIGNETTE (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A brief literary description

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Synonyms:

sketch; vignette

Hypernyms ("vignette" is a kind of...):

description (the act of describing something)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A photograph whose edges shade off gradually

Classified under:

Nouns denoting man-made objects

Hypernyms ("vignette" is a kind of...):

exposure; photo; photograph; pic; picture (a representation of a person or scene in the form of a print or transparent slide or in digital format)

Sense 3

Meaning:

A small illustrative sketch (as sometimes placed at the beginning of chapters in books)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting man-made objects

Hypernyms ("vignette" is a kind of...):

sketch; study (preliminary drawing for later elaboration)

 Context examples 

What characterized them was the clumsiness of too great strength—the clumsiness which the tyro betrays when he crushes butterflies with battering rams and hammers out vignettes with a war-club.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

The words in these introductory pages connected themselves with the succeeding vignettes, and gave significance to the rock standing up alone in a sea of billow and spray; to the broken boat stranded on a desolate coast; to the cold and ghastly moon glancing through bars of cloud at a wreck just sinking.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Provided with a case of pencils, and some sheets of paper, I used to take a seat apart from them, near the window, and busy myself in sketching fancy vignettes, representing any scene that happened momentarily to shape itself in the ever-shifting kaleidoscope of imagination: a glimpse of sea between two rocks; the rising moon, and a ship crossing its disk; a group of reeds and water-flags, and a naiad's head, crowned with lotus- flowers, rising out of them; an elf sitting in a hedge-sparrow's nest, under a wreath of hawthorn-bloom.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)