a picture paints a thousand words
English
Etymology
Reportedly first used by Frederick R. Barnard in Printer's Ink (December, 1921), while commenting that graphics can tell a story as effectively as a large amount of descriptive text.[1]
Proverb
a picture paints a thousand words
- Alternative form of a picture is worth a thousand words
- 1971, 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, Alan Kay, quoted in Kʻo-tung Huang, Timothy D. Huang, Introduction to Chinese, Japanese and Korean Computing, World Scientific, →ISBN, 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.
- 1971, David Gates (of Bread), If, from Manna album:
Translations
a picture is worth a thousand words — see a picture is worth a thousand words