Etimology
From Middle English ymage, borrowed from Old French image, from Latin imāgō (“a copy, likeness, image”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂eym-; the same PIE root is the source of imitari (“to copy, imitate”); see imitate. Displaced native Old English biliþe (“an image, a representation, resemblance, likeness; pattern, example”). Doublet of imago.
noun
image (plural images)
An optical or other representation of a real object; a graphic; a picture.
A mental picture of something not real or not present.
A statue or idol.
(computing) A file that contains all information needed to produce a live working copy. (See disk image and image copy.)
A characteristic of a person, group or company etc., style, manner of dress, how one is or wishes to be perceived by others.
(mathematics) What a function maps to.
(mathematics) The subset of a codomain comprising those elements that are images of something.
(radio) A form of interference: a weaker "copy" of a strong signal that occurs at a different frequency.
(obsolete) Show; appearance; cast.
Examples
The Bible forbids the worship of graven images.
The Citizens in their rage, imagining that euery poſt in the Churche had bin one of ye Souldyers, ſhot habbe or nabbe at randon[sic – meaning random] uppe to the Roode lofte, and to the Chancell, leauing ſome of theyr arrowes ſticking in the Images.
Drawings and pictures are more than mere ornaments in scientific discourse. Blackboard sketches, geological maps, diagrams of molecular structure, astronomical photographs, MRI images, the many varieties of statistical charts and graphs: These pictorial devices are indispensable tools for presenting evidence, for explaining a theory, for telling a story.
Think of banking today and the image is of grey-suited men in towering skyscrapers. Its future, however, is being shaped in converted warehouses and funky offices in San Francisco, New York and London, where bright young things in jeans and T-shirts huddle around laptops, sipping lattes or munching on free food.
Most game console emulators do not come with any ROM images for copyright reasons.
The number 6 is the image of 3 under f that is defined as f = 2x.
The image of this step function is the set of integers.
The face of things a frightful image bears.
Related words
synonyms
(representation): picture
(mental picture): idea
(something mapped to): value
(subset of the codomain): range
hyponyms
digital image
inverse image
macroimage
mental image
microimage
mirror image
real image
spitting image
virtual image
related terms
imaginable
imaginary
imagination
imaginative
imagine
verb
image (third-person singular simple present images, present participle imaging, simple past and past participle imaged)
(transitive) To represent by an image or symbol; to portray.
(transitive) To reflect, mirror.
(transitive) To create an image of.
(transitive, computing) To create a complete backup copy of a file system or other entity.
Examples
This Representation of the Terrors which must have attended the Conflict of two such mighty Powers as Jupiter and Neptune, whereby the Elements had been mix’d in Confusion, and the whole Frame of Nature endangered, is imaged in these few Lines with a Nobleness suitable to the Occasion.
[…] his behaviour was, as I had imaged to myself, solemnly devout.
[…] he repeated, with such tremulous feeling, the various lines which imaged a broken heart, or a mind destroyed by wretchedness, and looked so entirely as if he meant to be understood, that she ventured to hope he did not always read only poetry, and to say, that she thought it was the misfortune of poetry to be seldom safely enjoyed by those who enjoyed it completely […]
[The road] straggled onward into the mystery of a primeval forest. This hemmed it in so narrowly, and stood so black and dense on either side, and disclosed such imperfect glimpses of the sky above, that, to Hester’s mind, it imaged not amiss the moral wilderness in which she had so long been wandering.
For example, in one use of content analysis, U.S. researchers Victoria Holden, William Holden, and Gary Davis examined the growing controversy over the racial imaging of indigenous peoples symbolized in sports team nicknames […]
See’st thou yon river, whose translucent wave,Forth issuing from the darkness, windeth throughThe argent streets o’ th’ City, imagingThe soft inversion of her tremulous Domes,
Sorrow was dead indeed in her, but peace and perfect happiness were born; imaged in her tranquil beauty and profound repose.
[…] we look into a pair of eyes deep as our own, imaging our own, but all unconscious of us; to whom we, for the time, are become as spirits and invisible!
The single-imaging optic of the mammalian eye offers some distinct visual advantages. Such lenses can take in photons from a wide range of angles, increasing light sensitivity. They also have high spatial resolution, resolving incoming images in minute detail.