visual modality | Search Online Etymology Dictionary

37 entries found.

early 15c., "pertaining to the faculty of sight;" also "coming from the eye or sight" (as a beam of light was thought to do), from Late Latin visualis "of sight," from Latin visus "a sight, a looking; power of sight; things seen, appearance," from visus, past participle of videre "to see" (see vision). Meaning "perceptible by sight" is from late 15c; sense of "relating to vision" is first attested c. 1600. The noun meaning "photographic film or other visual display" is first recorded 1944.

modality (n.)

"fact of being a mode," 1610s, from French modalité or directly from Medieval Latin modalitatem (nominative modalitas) "a being modal," from modalis (see modal). Related: Modalities.

audiovisual (adj.)

also audio-visual, 1937, from audio- + visual.

visually (adv.)

mid-15c., from visual + -ly (2).

representational (adj.)

"pertaining to or of the nature of representation," 1855, originally in philosophy, from representation + -al (1). Specifically of visual arts by 1923. Related: Representationally.

visualize (v.)

1817, first attested in, and perhaps coined by, Coleridge ("Biographia Literaria"); see visual + -ize. Related: Visualized; visualizing.

contrapposto (n.)

in visual arts, "arrangement of a figure so that the action of the upper body is strongly contrasted with that of the lower," 1903, from Italian contrapposto, past participle of contrapporre, from Latin contraponere "to place opposite, to oppose to" (see contraposition).

Isis

Egyptian goddess, from Greek Isis, from Egyptian Hes, female deity identified by the Greeks with Io. She is distinguished in visual representations by the solar disc and cow horns on her head.

phanopoeia (n.)

1929, Pound's term for "a casting of images upon the visual imagination" in literature, from Greek phanai "to show, make visible, bring to light" (from PIE root *bha- (1) "to shine") + poiein "to make, create" (see poet).

nude (n.)

"the representation of the undraped human figure in visual art," 1708, from French nud, obsolete variant of nu "naked, nude, bare," from Latin nudus (see nude (adj.)). In the nude "in a condition of being unclothed" is by 1856.

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