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To paint or draw the likeness of; as, to portray a king on horseback. Take a tile, and lay it before thee, and portray upon it the city, even Jerusalem. Ezek. iv. 1.

The act or process of portraying; description; delineation.

One who portrays. Chaucer.

A faint sketch; an outline; an imperfect portrayal or representation of a thing. Elegant adumbrations of sacred truth. Bp. Horsley.

t. Shak. The abstract or argument of the piece. Jeffrey. [Shields] with boastful argument portrayed. Milton.

Representing by imitation or likeness; having a resemblance to something else; portrayed. Look here upon this picture, and on this-The counterfeit presentment of two brothers. Shak.

Delineated; portrayed. [R.]

The act of representing, portraying, or describing, as by lines, diagrams, sketches, etc.; drawing an outline; as, the delineation of a scene or face; in drawing and engraving, representation by means of lines, as distinguished from representation by means of tints shades; accurate and minute representation, as disting…

To form a colored likeness of; to represent by a picture; to paint; to portray. His arms are fairly depicted in his chamber. Fuller.

To form a conception of; to portray in the mind; to imagine. He whom I fancy, but can ne'er express. Dryden.

To portray too favorably; to give a too favorable idea of; as, his portrait flatters him.

Not capable of being represented or portrayed.

To represent by lines; to delineate; to portray. [R.] "Pictures fairest lined." Shak.

as upon canvas; to represent by means of colors or hues; to exhibit in a tinted image; to portray with paints; as, to paint a portrait or a landscape.

Covered or adorned with paint; portrayed in colors. As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean. Coleridge.

To portray; to draw. [Obs.] Spenser.

To represent by a portrait, or as by a portrait; to portray. [R.] Shaftesbury.

See Portray.

To portray by pictoral or plastic art; to delineate; as, to represent a landscape in a picture, a horse in bronze, and the like.

To make an image or other representation of; to portray; to cause to exist in the memory or imagination; to make a copy of; as, to reproduce a person's features in marble, or on canvas; to reproduce a design.