sculpture

Pluralsculptures

Formssculptures, sculpturing, sculptured

1. 1
   nouncountable

   A three-dimensional work of art made by shaping a soft material until it hardens or by carving pieces away from stone.

   She unveiled her latest sculpture at the downtown gallery.

   The museum's collection includes sculptures dating back two thousand years.

   Similarstatue, carving, figure, piece

   Note

   The sense closest to the word's root: Middle English and Old French sculpture, from Latin sculptūra, built on sculpō, "to cut out, to carve in stone." Dryden's Virgil (1697) speaks of figures in "living sculpture," praise for carving so lifelike it seems to move. As a countable noun it takes an article and a plural: a sculpture, a hall of sculptures.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   Works of art created by carving or shaping, considered together as a single category.

   The gallery is devoted entirely to modern sculpture.

   He prefers sculpture to every other form of visual art.

   Note

   Used without an article, the word names the art as a whole: modern sculpture, Greek sculpture, a gallery of sculpture. That is the quickest way to tell it from a single carved work. If you can say a sculpture or count several, you are in the other sense. If it stands beside painting as a category, you are here.

3. 3
   nouncountable

   Since modernism, a three-dimensional work of art in any material or mix of materials, whether carved, assembled, found or built.

   Her award-winning sculpture combined steel, glass, and found plastic.

   The biennial featured sculptures assembled from industrial waste.

   Similarpiece, work

   Note

   Here the word has outgrown its carving root. A modernist work may be welded, assembled from scrap, or simply found and displayed, and it still counts as a sculpture. The word now names the three-dimensional result, whatever the method. It stays countable, like the carved work, so a show can hold sculptures of steel, glass and plastic side by side.

4. 4
   verbtransitive

   To work a material into a three-dimensional figure by shaping or carving.

   Students learn to sculpture the human form from live models.

   He sculptured the figure over several months.

   Similarsculpt, carve, model, shape

5. 5
   verbtransitive

   To portray a person, animal, or object by means of three-dimensional carved or modeled work.

   The commission asked her to sculpture the founder in bronze.

   Ancient Greeks sculptured their gods in idealized human form.

   Similarsculpt, carve, model, cast, portray

6. 6
   verbtransitive

   To gradually reshape a landform through erosion or other slow natural forces.

   Powerful ocean waves sculpture the coastline over the centuries.

   Glaciers sculptured these mountains over thousands of years.

   Similarshape, carve, sculpt, erode, form

7. 7
   noununcountable

   In zoology, the relief pattern, such as ridges or ribs, on the outside of a shell.

   The gastropod's spiral sculpture helps biologists identify the species.

   Fine ridges make up the sculpture on this clam shell.

   Similarornamentation

   Note

   Zoologists who study shells use the word for the raised relief on a shell's exterior: ribs, spines, nodules and grooves. Together with color and overall form, it helps tell one species from another. It is usually uncountable, so a shell has fine or coarse sculpture rather than sculptures. The word describes relief you could feel with a fingertip, not a pattern of color.

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