thumbnail

[thuhm-neyl] /ˈθʌmˌneɪl/
noun
1.
the nail of the thumb.
2.
anything quite small or brief, as a small drawing or short essay.
3.
Printing. a small, rough dummy.
4.
Also called porkchop. Journalism, Printing. a half-column portrait in a newspaper.
adjective
5.
quite small or brief; concise:
a thumbnail description of Corsica.
verb (used with object)
6.
to make a thumbnail sketch or description of.
Origin
1595-1605; thumb + nail
Examples from the web for thumbnail
  • The whole code of her laws may be written on the thumbnail, or the signet of a ring.
  • Click once on the one you want and a down arrow appears on the right of that slide thumbnail.
  • The smallest known dragonfly is about the size of your thumbnail.
  • Each thumbnail in the carousel above is a different piece of the map you will need to download.
  • At the book's end, each image is reprinted as a thumbnail and accompanied by a detailed caption.
  • Some of these insects are only the size of a human thumbnail, while others are big enough to cover a human face.
  • In a larger, newer church adjacent, a shard of pale bone no bigger than a thumbnail lies in a golden reliquary.
  • The result is a thumbnail chronology of the minutiae of the wearer's daily life.
  • All of this yields a thumbnail chronology of the minutiae of the wearer's existence.
  • There was perhaps some truth to this none too friendly thumbnail sketch.
British Dictionary definitions for thumbnail

thumbnail

/ˈθʌmˌneɪl/
noun
1.
the nail of the thumb
2.
(modifier) concise and brief: a thumbnail sketch
3.
(computing) a small image which can be expanded
Word Origin and History for thumbnail
n.

c.1600, from thumb (n.) + nail (n.). Meaning "drawing or sketch of a small size" (though usually not lierally the size of a thumbnail) is from 1852.

thumbnail in Technology
file format, graphics
(From "thumbnail sketch") A file format used by Graphics Workshop for Microsoft Windows. Filename extension: ".thn".
[What's in the files?]
(1996-05-28)