figuration — English Dictionary

Noun

1. The act of giving figure or determinate form.

   Usage

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2. Form, outline or boundaries.

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3. Ornamentation or decoration, especially by the addition of figures.

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   Examples

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   […]a shift to modernist building typologies in the early 1950s led to the abandonment of symmetry, centrality, and figuration. Since the 1980s, big-box typologies, frosted with postmodern architectural veneer, have dominated.

4. Mixture of concords and discords.

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   Examples

   Here and throughout, variation infuses the music, Chopin’s innovative, elastic figuration masking the underlying similarity of bars 23 and 25.

5. Representation through visual forms.

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   To recapitulate: consider the human form—skin, bone, and flesh. Consider the painting—surface, structure, and pigment. With a little license, the first gives us the ingredients for what might be called human or “figurative” figuration; the second gives us the ingredients for abstract or “nonfigurative” figuration.

6. A structure through which people are joined, or the process of constructing such structures.

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   Figurations of interdependent people make up many webs of interdependence, which are characterized in part by different balances of power of many sorts, such as families, states, towns or simply groups.

Noun

1. representing figuratively as by emblem or allegory

   Broader terms

   representation

2. decorating with a design

   Broader terms

   decoration