pictures

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of picture.

   The gallery displayed pictures from several local photographers.

   He keeps old family pictures in a wooden box under the stairs.

   Note

   Every kind of image the noun covers pluralizes the same way: paintings, photographs, drawings, even the pictures a person holds in the mind. Put the definite article in front, though, and the plural can stop counting images, because the pictures is an informal name for the cinema. The same spelling also serves as the verb form in she pictures the scene, so the surrounding grammar, not the word itself, tells you which is meant.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of picture.

   Whenever the coach pictures the final play, she sketches it on the board.

   The novel pictures rural life in vivid and unsparing detail.

   Note

   Always followed by an object: she pictures the scene, the novel pictures rural life. Every use of the verb is transitive, whether the meaning is imagining, depicting in an image, or describing vividly. Its spelling matches the plural noun, but an object coming after it marks the verb.

3. 3
   nounIrelandUKplural

   A theater where films are shown to a paying audience; a cinema.

   They met outside the pictures before the evening showing.

   A trip to the pictures was a popular weekend outing for the whole family.

   Similarcinema, movies

   Note

   Heard in the UK and Ireland, usually in the set phrase go to the pictures: we go to the pictures every Saturday night. The form is plural-only, so even a single venue is the pictures, never a picture, and it nearly always takes the definite article. Outside those regions, cinema or movie theater is the safer choice.

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