a picture paints a thousand words

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[edit] English

[edit] Etymology

Coined by David Gates in the opening line of the song If, written in 1971.

[edit] Proverb

a picture paints a thousand words

  1. A visualisation is a better description than a verbal description.
    • 1971 (US), David Gates (of Bread), If, from Manna album,
      If a picture paints a thousand words/Then why can't I paint you;/The words will never show/The you I've come to know.
    • 1989 (US), Alan Kay, quoted in Kʻo-tung Huang, Timothy D. Huang, Introduction to Chinese, Japanese and Korean Computing, World Scientific, ISBN 9971506645, p. 9,
      Most human beings, no matter how familiar they are with abstract symbols, respond to voice and images better than written language. In other words, A picture paints a thousand words.
    • 2006 (UK), Paul Shakespeare, Building a Dune Buggy: The Essential Manual, Veloce Publishing Ltd, ISBN 1904788734, p. 52,
      See accompanying diagram: a picture paints a thousand words, and all that!

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[edit] Synonyms

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