Word.ws English Dictionary

foreshortening

foreshortening noun: a technique for creating the appearance that the object of a drawing is extending into space by shortening the lines with which that object is drawn. Also the present participle and gerund of foreshorten.

foreshortening: a technique for creating the appearance that the object of a drawing is extending into space by...
Image: Andrea Mantegna, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

foreshortening (countable and uncountable, plural foreshortenings)

  1. A technique for creating the appearance that the object of a drawing is extending into space by shortening the lines with which that object is drawn.
  2. A similar contracted appearance in film or photography, etc.

Also used as

foreshortening is also the present participle and gerund of foreshorten.

Forms of foreshortening

pluralforeshortenings

Questions about foreshortening

What does foreshortening mean?
Foreshortening means a technique for creating the appearance that the object of a drawing is extending into space by shortening the lines with which that object is drawn.
What part of speech is foreshortening?
Foreshortening is a noun.
What is the plural of foreshortening?
The plural of foreshortening is foreshortenings.

Words near foreshortening in the dictionary

  1. foreshores
  2. foreshorten
  3. foreshortened
  4. foreshortener
  5. foreshorteners
  6. foreshortening
  7. foreshortenings
  8. foreshortens
  9. foreshot
  10. foreshots
  11. foreshoulder

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: foreshortening (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: “foreshortening.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/foreshortening. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.