Meaning

The act of giving figure or determinate form..

Definitions by Sense

1. The act of giving figure or determinate form.
2. Form, outline or boundaries.
3. Ornamentation or decoration, especially by the addition of figures.
4. Mixture of concords and discords.
5. (art) Representation through visual forms.
6. (sociology) A structure through which people are joined, or the process of constructing such structures.

Example Sentences

[…]a shift to modernist building typologies in the early 1950s led to the abandonment of symmetry, centrality, and figuration. Since the 1980s, big-box typologies, frosted with postmodern architectural veneer, have dominated.

Here and throughout, variation infuses the music, Chopin’s innovative, elastic figuration masking the underlying similarity of bars 23 and 25.

To recapitulate: consider the human form—skin, bone, and flesh. Consider the painting—surface, structure, and pigment. With a little license, the first gives us the ingredients for what might be called human or “figurative” figuration; the second gives us the ingredients for abstract or “nonfigurative” figuration.

Figurations of interdependent people make up many webs of interdependence, which are characterized in part by different balances of power of many sorts, such as families, states, towns or simply groups.

Word Forms

• figurations

Related Words

When Should You Use Figuration?

Use figuration when its meaning, tone and grammar fit the full sentence. A synonym is not always a direct replacement.

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