v. [f. FORE- pref. + SHORTEN v.]
1. trans. Of the effect of visual perspective: To cause (an object) to be apparently shortened in the directions not lying in a plane perpendicular to the line of sight. Of a draughtsman: To delineate (an object) so as to represent this apparent shortening.
1606. Peacham, Art Drawing, 28. If I should paint … an horse with his brest and head looking full in my face, I must of necessity foreshorten him behinde because his sides and flanks appeare not vnto me.
1650. Bulwer, Anthropomet., 261. Although of late we seemed rather to be Chinoise women, and to affect little short feet as they do in China, much Art being used to make the foot shew as foreshortned, a short foot being thought then more handsome and fashionable.
a. 1680. Butler, Rem. (1759), I. 263.
| As ’tis a greater Mystery in the Art | |
| Of painting to foreshorten any Part, | |
| Than draw it out; so ’tis in Books the chief | |
| Of all Perfections to be plain and brief. |
1784. Sir J. Reynolds, Disc., xii. (1876), 51. We must consider the barbarous state of the arts before his [Raffaelle’s] time, when skill in drawing was so little understood that the best of the painters could not even foreshorten the foot, but every figure appeared to stand upon his toes.
1838. Dickens, Nich. Nick., iii. A charming whole length of a large-headed little boy, sitting on a stool with his legs foreshortened to the size of salt-spoons.
1853. Herschel, Pop. Lect. Sc., v. § 9 (1873), 184. Placing a telescope a little beyond one of its proposed extremities, so as to command them both, and as it were to fore-shorten its whole length into one point, the intersection of two wires in its focus.
transf. and fig. 1758. Spence, Parallel, 22. After he had taken to this way of fore-shortening his reading, if I may be allowed so odd an expression.
1850. Tennyson, In Mem., lxxvii.
| What hope is here for modern rhyme | |
| To him, who turns a musing eye | |
| On songs, and deeds, and lives, that lie | |
| Foreshorten’d in the tract of time? |
absol. 1841. W. Spalding, Italy & It. Isl., II. 356. One must study these remarkable monuments before forming any adequate notion either of the master’s mechanical skill, especially in foreshortening on the ceiling (an experiment which he was the first to try), or of the æsthetical effect which he is capable of producing.
2. nonce-use. In literal sense: To shorten or curtail in advance.
1839. Bailey, Festus, xiii. (1848), 122.
| In it came—glanced upon a glowing page, | |
| Where, youth forestalling and foreshortening age. |
Hence Foreshortened ppl. a.
1654. Marvell, First Anniversary, 139.
| Foreshortned Time its useless course would stay | |
| And soon precipitate the latest day. |
1831. Brewster, Nat. Magic, v. (1833), 122. The foreshortened figure of a dead body lying horizontally, which has the appearance of following the observer with great rapidity, and turning round upon the head as the centre of motion.
1859. Gullick & Timbs, Paint., 147. It was by such means that Correggio painted his wonderful foreshortened figures in the cupolas at Parma.
1874. Lady Herbert, trans. Hübner’s Ramble, I. vii. (1878), 88. Placed close together, about five miles from the crest of the ridge, these mountains all look to us foreshortened.
