canvas

Pluralcanvases (some meanings), canvasses (some meanings)

Formscanvases, canvasing, canvased

1. 1
   noununcountable

   A heavy, rough cloth woven from hemp, used for sails and tents and as a surface for painting.

   The old sail was cut from heavy canvas that had weathered many storms.

   Workers stretched lengths of canvas over the poles to form the tents.

   Similarsailcloth

   Note

   Hemp is hidden in the name. Through Anglo-Norman and Old Northern French it goes back to Latin cannabis and Greek kánnabis, the plant the cloth was first woven from. In use it has long been a broad trade term: James Edwin Thorold Rogers noted in 1882 that it covered everything from coarse kitchen strainers and meat wraps to good table and shirting linen.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   A piece of cloth stretched across a frame, providing a surface on which an artist paints.

   She primed the canvas before starting her portrait.

   Several blank canvases leaned against the studio wall.

   Note

   The painter's support is the cloth of the hemp fabric, stretched over a wooden frame and primed, often with gesso, to take oil or acrylic paint. Unlike the fabric, it is countable: a canvas, two canvases. The plural is normally canvases. Canvasses also occurs, but that spelling is easily mistaken for the verb meaning to solicit votes, so canvases is the safer choice.

3. 3
   nounfigurativelycountable

   A starting point or open framework that provides the basis for creative work.

   The director treated the bare stage as a canvas for bold experiments.

   For her, the human body was a canvas on which she told whole stories.

   Note

   A metaphor borrowed straight from the painter's stretched cloth: a setting, subject or material that a writer, director or artist works upon. It typically appears in the frame take something as a canvas for, as when an author takes rural midwestern life as a canvas for character studies. The point of the figure is that the subject is the ground, not the picture.

4. 4
   nouncountable

   A defined region on which graphics can be drawn or rendered by a program.

   The developer resized the canvas to fit the browser window.

   Each frame, the game redraws every sprite onto the canvas.

   Note

   Programmers borrowed the painter's word for a rectangular drawing surface, exposed by a graphics interface or markup element, onto which code renders shapes, images and text. Points on it are addressed by coordinates, usually with the origin at one corner. The program, not a hand, does the painting, so resizing or clearing the canvas is a routine step in redrawing each frame.

5. 5
   nouncountable

   A mesh of loosely woven cotton strands or molded plastic, used as a base to be decorated with needlepoint, cross-stitch, or other crafts.

   He counted the holes in the canvas to center his cross-stitch design.

   Beginners often start with a coarse canvas that has larger holes.

6. 6
   verbtransitive

   To spread canvas over an area or object to cover it.

   Volunteers canvas the stage before each outdoor concert.

   They will canvas the entire roof if the leaks continue.

   Note

   The verb keeps a single s throughout its forms: canvases, canvasing, canvased. That spelling is what separates covering something with cloth from canvassing voters, whose forms double the s. Write the stage was canvased before the concert, but the ward was canvassed before the election.

7. 7
   noununcountable

   The full spread of sail a vessel carries, considered as a whole rather than as individual sails.

   The captain ordered every scrap of canvas spread to outrun the storm.

   As the wind rose, the crew took in canvas to steady the vessel.

   Similarsail

   Note

   Sailors measure sail as cloth. Here canvas is a mass noun for all the sail a ship sets, so a crew spreads or takes in canvas rather than counting sails. Benjamin Franklin, writing in 1785, warned that owners overmasted their cruisers "to spread too much canvass." He spelled it with the double s that the cloth word once shared with its political lookalike.

8. 8
   noununcountable

   A tent, especially one made of heavy cloth used for shelter or camping.

   The whole regiment lived under canvas during the summer maneuvers.

   By dusk, a cluster of canvas dotted the riverbank.

   Note

   Here the material stands for the shelter, and the sense lives almost entirely in one fixed phrase: to sleep, live or spend the night under canvas, meaning in tents. The phrase takes no article (under canvas, not under a canvas), and it suits soldiers, campers and expeditions alike.

9. 9
   nouncountable

   A rough draft or model of a song or other composition, especially one showing a poet the measure of the verses to be made.

   The poet shaped his lines to match the canvas supplied by the court composer.

   Before the melody was finished, only a bare canvas of the air existed.

   Similarsketch, draft, outline

10. 10
    nounNigeriauncountable

    Athletic shoes, especially lightweight ones with canvas uppers.

    The team trained in lightweight canvas rather than heavy leather boots.

    He kept a fresh pair of canvas ready for game days.

    Similarsneakers, plimsolls

    Note

    In Nigerian English the cloth gives its name to the shoe, much as it gives its name to the tent in the "under canvas" sense. The word covers athletic shoes as a group, so it is used in phrases like a pair of canvas. Outside Nigeria, readers may take it to mean the fabric, so the surrounding words should make the footwear clear.

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