illustration
Pluralillustrations
- 1
- 2An example or comparison meant to make something clear or remove confusion.
She offered a vivid illustration of supply and demand using a lemonade stand.
The court case became a textbook illustration of how the law can be misread.
Similarexample, instance, demonstration, case, analogy
Note
This sense is most at home in the frame an illustration of how…, where a single event stands in for a larger pattern. Phil McNulty, writing for BBC Sport in 2012, calls England's win over Ukraine an illustration of how they rode their luck for long periods. Unlike the picture sense, nothing here needs to be visual. The case itself does the clarifying.
- 3The act of making something clear and distinct, usually through examples or images.
The illustration of the new procedure occupied most of the training session.
For the illustration of his argument, he turned to a labeled diagram on the board.
Similarexplanation, demonstration, clarification, elucidation, exposition
Note
The process noun behind the word's other uses: illustrate plus -ion, which reached English through Middle French from Latin illūstrātiō. Here it names the doing rather than the result, and it works as a mass noun as easily as a count noun. The result goes by the same word, whether an example that clarifies or a picture in a book. An of-phrase naming what is being made clear, as in the illustration of a point, usually signals the act.
- 4The condition of having been made clear and distinct.
The abstract theory finally found illustration in the museum's interactive exhibit.
Once the data was charted, the trend reached full illustration for the committee.
Similarexpression, clarification
- 5A projected estimate of the premiums and returns associated with a life insurance policy.
The agent walked the couple through an illustration of the whole-life policy.
Regulators require that every illustration clearly separate guaranteed values from projected ones.
Similarprojection
Note
In the life-insurance trade, the word names a document shown to a prospective policyholder before purchase. It projects future premiums, cash values and death benefits under assumed interest and mortality conditions. Its figures are projections rather than promises, which is why guaranteed and projected values are kept apart. Read one as a scenario, not a quote.
Practice
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Origin
From Middle French illustration, from Latin illūstrātiō, from the verb illūstrō ("I illustrate"). It can be analyzed as illustrate plus the suffix -ion.