Word.ws English Dictionary

chiaro-oscuro

chiaro-oscuro is the archaic form of chiaroscuro.

Meaning of chiaroscuro

Noun

chiaroscuro (countable and uncountable, plural chiaroscuros or chiaroscuri)

  1. (painting) An artistic technique developed during the Renaissance, referring to the use of strong contrasts between light and dark in order to create the illusion of volume.
  2. (painting) A monochrome picture made by using several different shades of the same color.
  3. A woodcut technique in which several woodcut blocks are used to print different shades of a color, or a woodcut print made by this technique.
  4. A photographic technique in which one side of the subject, for example a face, is well lit and the other is in shadow.

See all 5 meanings of chiaroscuro

Forms of chiaro-oscuro

pluralchiaro-oscuros

Origin of chiaro-oscuro

From Italian chiaro-oscuro, under influence from French clair-obscur.

Questions about chiaro-oscuro

What is chiaro-oscuro the archaic form of?
Chiaro-oscuro is the archaic form of chiaroscuro.

Words near chiaro-oscuro in the dictionary

  1. Chiari malformation
  2. Chiari malformations
  3. Chiari-Frommel syndrome
  4. chiarivari
  5. chiarivaris
  6. chiaro-oscuro
  7. chiaro-oscuros
  8. chiaro-scuro
  9. chiaroscuri
  10. chiaroscurist
  11. chiaroscurists

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: chiaro-oscuro (page history and authors); chiaroscuro (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “chiaro-oscuro.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/chiaro-oscuro. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.