🔳 🔳 🔳


Primary

⁀➴

''statue'' ▫ᴱᴺ|Definition|1st|20260609164652-00-⌔

statue - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

statue (plural statues)

🖼️ ➺

  • A three-dimensional work of art, usually representing a person or animal, usually created by sculpting, carving, molding, or casting.
    • I will raise her statue in pure gold.1
    • It’s true, Robert E. Lee was opposed to statues of people like Robert E. Lee! So any city that decides to keep a statue of him should, at the very least, add a speech bubble saying, “You know, I specifically told you all not to do this.”!2
  • (dated) A portrait.
    • The young lady just then would have formed a graceful model for a statue of Attention3

Verb

statue (third-person singular simple present statues, present participle statuing, simple past and past participle statued)

  • (transitive) To form a statue of; to make into a statue.
    • The whole man becomes as if statued into stone and earth.4

Etymology

From Old French statue, from Latin statua, derived from statuō (“set up or erect”). Doublet of statua.

Pronunciation

  • (Received Pronunciation)
    • (yod-coalescence) IPA: /ˈstæt͡ʃ.uː/
    • (non-yod-coalescence) IPA: /ˈstæt.juː/
  • (General American) IPA: /ˈstæt͡ʃu/

Printed 2026-06-28.

(echo:: @ )

Footnotes

  1. c. 1591–1595 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Romeo and Ivliet”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene iii]:

  2. 2017 October 8, “Confederacy”, in Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, season 4, episode 26, John Oliver (actor), via HBO:

  3. a. 1876, Philip Massinger, Mart and Mansion:

  4. 1623, Owen Feltham, Resolves: Divine, Moral, Political:

Link to original

Secondary

• • •