I. |pikchə|resk, -ksh- adjective
Etymology: modification (influenced by picture ) (I) of French & Italian; French pittoresque, from Italian pittoresco, from pittore painter (from Latin pictor, from pictus — past participle of pingere to paint — + -or ) + -esco -esque — more at paint
1.
a. : like a picture : resembling or suggesting a painted scene : suitable as a subject for painting
picturesque village
picturesque fishing fleet
discovered grouped in picturesque attitudes about the stage — W.S.Gilbert
b. : pleasing or charming by reason of quaintness : creating informal patterns of shape, light, and color
a pleasantly picturesque style of architecture
venerable family mansion in a highly picturesque state of semidilapidation — T.L.Peacock
c. : unusual, primitive, or markedly characteristic in appearance : quaint
modern touches without sacrificing its picturesque French colonial charm — Mary R. Johnson
pioneering conditions that are picturesque to look back upon but were rather trying to live through — Marquis James
2. : characterized by an interest in what is picturesque
easy for a picturesque historian to lay side by side the most glaring contrasts — Virginia Woolf
3. : evoking mental images : vivid
picturesque epithets
gave a picturesque account of his adventure
• pic·tur·esque·ly adverb
• pic·tur·esque·ness noun -es
II. noun
( -s )
: picturesque quality : picturesqueness ; especially : esthetic quality that evokes the atmosphere of another age, environment, or mode of existence — used with the
the novelist of contemporary manners needs to be saturated with a sense of the picturesque in modern things — Arnold Bennett