PICTORIAL

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does pictorial mean? 

• PICTORIAL (noun)
  The noun PICTORIAL has 1 sense:

1. a periodical (magazine or newspaper) containing many pictures

  Familiarity information: PICTORIAL used as a noun is very rare.

• PICTORIAL (adjective)
  The adjective PICTORIAL has 2 senses:

1. pertaining to or consisting of pictures

2. evoking lifelike images within the mind

  Familiarity information: PICTORIAL used as an adjective is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• PICTORIAL (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A periodical (magazine or newspaper) containing many pictures

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Hypernyms ("pictorial" is a kind of...):

periodical (a publication that appears at fixed intervals)

Derivation:

pictorial (pertaining to or consisting of pictures)

• PICTORIAL (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Pertaining to or consisting of pictures

Classified under:

Relational adjectives (pertainyms)

Synonyms:

pictorial; pictural

Context example:

pictorial records

Pertainym:

picture (illustrations used to decorate or explain a text)

Derivation:

pictorial (a periodical (magazine or newspaper) containing many pictures)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Evoking lifelike images within the mind

Synonyms:

graphic; lifelike; pictorial; vivid

Context example:

a vivid description

Similar:

realistic (aware or expressing awareness of things as they really are)

 Context examples 

One side of one leaf (of a book or magazine or newspaper or letter etc.) or the written or pictorial matter it contains.

(Page, NCI Thesaurus)

For a long time he smoked on in silence, weighing the pictorial wisdom of the white man and verifying it by the facts of life.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

A pictorial representation of a graph on plane, for visualization of certain properties of the graph or of the data modeled by the graph.

(Graph Layout, NCI Thesaurus)

We mounted the first staircase, passed up the gallery, proceeded to the third storey: the low, black door, opened by Mr. Rochester's master-key, admitted us to the tapestried room, with its great bed and its pictorial cabinet.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

It was a pictorial sheet, and Jo examined the work of art nearest her, idly wondering what fortuitous concatenation of circumstances needed the melodramatic illustration of an Indian in full war costume, tumbling over a precipice with a wolf at his throat, while two infuriated young gentlemen, with unnaturally small feet and big eyes, were stabbing each other close by, and a disheveled female was flying away in the background with her mouth wide open.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)