Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Relating to, having, or producing different optical imaging effects along mutually perpendicular radii.
  • adjective Of or relating to a widescreen film or video that has been converted to a storage format with a lower aspect ratio by shrinking the image only along the horizontal axis in order to minimize loss of resolution.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Pertaining to or resulting from anamorphism.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective producing various optically distorted images
  • adjective of or relating to the gradual evolution of different types of organism

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective pertaining to gradual evolution from one type of organism to another
  • adjective pertaining to a kind of distorting optical system

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[ana– + –morph + –ic.]

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Examples

Comments

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  • A method of creating a wide screen image with standard film, using a special lens on the camera and projector that compresses the width of the image that is exposed on the film and then expands it when projected.

    January 17, 2009

  • An anamorphic image is one that can only be interpreted when viewed from a particular angle or through a transforming optical device like a mirror. Gallery at the link.

    January 17, 2009

  • Very interesting, and thanks, Sumit, for supplying the gallery. One of my favorite public sculptures in Ljubljana is the monument to the Slovene novelist and playwright Ivan Cankar, which stands in front of the Cankar Cultural Center. Designed by the sculptor Slavko Tihec, it is in the shape of a cube. On the front and the back, if you look at it directly, you see what looks like wavy vertical grooves, but if you look at it slightly from an angle, you see the writer's face. I have always thought this was a brilliant way to present in bronze the idea of reading: you don't always get the meaning until you find the right angle from which to approach it.

    January 17, 2009