images

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of image.

   The telescope captured detailed images of the distant galaxy.

   Vivid images of his childhood home kept returning to him.

   Note

   One spelling gathers very different things: pictures in art, pictures in the mind, statues and idols, backup files that copy a whole disk, and in mathematics the values a function maps its arguments to. Context alone tells them apart. The same spelling also serves as the present-tense verb, so "the satellite images the coast" and "the satellite's images" differ only in grammar.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of image.

   The MRI machine images soft tissue with remarkable clarity.

   The new satellite images vast stretches of coastline every day.

   Note

   A transitive form throughout: it always takes a direct object, as in the scanner images the tissue or the script images the drive. Its range runs from portraying and mirroring to the technical work of scanning something or copying an entire file system as a backup. Read it as a verb when a subject comes before it and an object follows. Otherwise it is the plural noun.

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