Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Of or relating to the sense of sight.
  • adjective Seen or able to be seen by the eye; visible.
  • adjective Optical.
  • adjective Done, maintained, or executed by sight only.
  • adjective Having the nature of or producing an image in the mind.
  • adjective Of or relating to a method of instruction involving sight.
  • noun A picture, chart, or other presentation that appeals to the sense of sight, used in promotion or for illustration or narration.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun One who is eye-minded, that is, one who thinks, remembers, imagines, etc., predominantly in terms of sight.
  • Of or pertaining to sight; relating to vision; used in sight; serving as the instrument of seeing; optic: as, the visual nerve.
  • Visible; perceptible by the sight.
  • Resulting from the eye; produced by a look: as, visual influences.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Of or pertaining to sight; used in sight; serving as the instrument of seeing.
  • adjective rare That can be seen; visible.
  • adjective (Opt.) See under Angle.
  • adjective (Persp.) a cone whose vertex is at the point of sight, or the eye.
  • adjective any plane passing through the point of sight.
  • adjective the point at which the visual rays unite; the position of the eye.
  • adjective (Physiol.) a photochemical substance, of a purplish red color, contained in the retina of human eyes and in the eyes of most animals. It is quickly bleached by light, passing through the colors, red, orange, and yellow, and then disappearing. Also called rhodopsin, and vision purple. See Optography.
  • adjective a line from the eye, or point of sight.
  • adjective (Physiol.) the final product in the action of light on visual purple. It is reconverted into visual purple by the regenerating action of the choroidal epithelium.
  • adjective (Physiol.) a product intermediate between visual purple and visual white, formed in the photochemical action of light on visual purple.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Related to or affecting the vision.
  • noun Any element of something that depends on sight.
  • noun An image; a picture; a graphic.
  • noun in the plural All the visual elements of a multi-media presentation or entertainment, usually in contrast with normal text or audio.
  • noun advertising A preliminary sketch.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective relating to or using sight
  • adjective visible

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from Late Latin vīsuālis, from Latin vīsus, sight, from past participle of vidēre, to see; see vision.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old French, from Late Latin visualis ("of sight"), from Latin visus ("sight"), from videre ("to see"), past participle visus; see visage.

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Examples

  • And then we will calculate what we call a visual skin print, which is just like a finger print, except it's the impact of the light on your skin.

    CNN Transcript Feb 16, 2003 2003

  • CHILD: Well, he was in what they called visual presentation.

    CNN Transcript - Larry King Live: Julia Child Dispenses Her 'Kitchen Wisdom' - December 28, 2000 2000

  • Fifty percent of proceeds will go to African charities, Mr. Peter said, and he hopes the book will be the beginning of what he describes as a visual movement that will "create awareness" and "rebrand" destitute countries.

    NYT > Home Page By SPENCER MORGAN 2011

  • Fifty percent of proceeds will go to African charities, Mr. Peter said, and he hopes the book will be the beginning of what he describes as a visual movement that will "create awareness" and "rebrand" destitute countries.

    NYT > Home Page By SPENCER MORGAN 2011

  • The disputes concerning the theory of vision had very much divided the ancient philosophers; some of them imagining that vision was caused by the reception of rays into the eye; while a great many others thought it more agreeable to nature, that certain emanations, which they called visual rays, should flow from the eye to the object.

    Popular Lectures on Zoonomia Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease Thomas Garnett 1784

  • (French link) have put together what they call a visual rumour roundup for the 4th gen iPhone.

    Megite Technology News: What's Happening Right Now 2010

  • (French link) have put together what they call a visual rumour roundup for the 4th gen iPhone.

    Megite Technology News: What's Happening Right Now 2010

  • "I cannot overemphasize the importance of any device to any content over any combination of networks enabled by Cisco's technology architecture approach, but it also is important that video will play in not only communications to life but also in loading networks, what we call visual networking," Cisco CEO John Chambers said last month in Cisco's quarterly earnings call.

    ChannelWeb Complete Feed 2009

  • NVIDIA IS DRUMMING up support for for what it calls visual and high-performance computing by offering cash to companies through a GPU Ventures Program.

    The Inquirer 2009

  • I express myself best through what I call my visual voice.

    dispatch.com: RSS 2009

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