foreshortening
noun, verb
foreshortening is a noun meaning “A technique for creating the appearance that the object of a drawing is extending into space by shortening the lines with which that object is drawn” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled F-O-R-E-S-H-O-R-T-E-N-I-N-G, and it appears about once in every 17 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of foreshortening is foreshortenings.
What does foreshortening mean?
noun
- 1
A technique for creating the appearance that the object of a drawing is extending into space by shortening the lines with which that object is drawn.
- 2
A similar contracted appearance in film or photography, etc.
verb
- 1
present participle and gerund of foreshorten
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of foreshortening
- foreshortenings plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is foreshortening?
Foreshortening appears about once in every 17 million words in written English, the 122,704th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Foreshortening in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense art technique:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | raccourci |
| German | Verkürzung |
| Spanish | escorzo |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.