Portraitists

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Individuals who specialize in creating likenesses of others, typically through painting or drawing
2. Artists renowned for capturing the essence and features of a subject in visual form
3. Creators of formal or informal representations of people, often focusing on facial expressions and characteristics

Etymology: Portraitists are simply portrait painters, and the word is a plain formation: "portrait" with the agent suffix "-ist" added, so the plural just adds "-s". The suffix has a long ancestry. It goes back through Latin "-ista" and Old French "-iste" to Ancient Greek "-istēs", a suffix that marked someone who practises or follows a particular activity, as in "kitharistēs", a lyre player. English took "-ist" in through Middle English, so the ending was familiar to speakers long before anyone needed a word for a painter of likenesses. "Portrait" itself came into English from French, where "portrait" was the past participle of "portraire", to portray, so a portrait was literally something that had been drawn or depicted. The combination "portrait + -ist" is an English formation built on that base, which is why it reads as a modern compound even though every piece of it is old.

Synonyms: portrait painters, artists, illustrators