What does "gravure" mean?

A type of intaglio printing process, in which an image is engraved onto a rotating copper cylinder.

Gravure

Common synonyms include: albertype, book printing, chromotypography, chromotypy, chromoxylography, collotype.

noun

noun ·Uncommon ·College level

Noun

1
A type of intaglio printing process, in which an image is engraved onto a rotating copper cylinder. countable, uncountable
"for too long have the walls of our houses been adorned with examples of effete Old World portrait gravure."
2
the act of intaglio printing wordnet
3
A style of Japanese softcore; glamour photography. Japan, countable, uncountable
4
an intaglio print produced by gravure wordnet
5
a printing plate used in the process of gravure wordnet

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6
a printing process that uses an etched or engraved plate; the plate is smeared with ink and wiped clean, then the ink left in the recesses makes the print wordnet

"for too long have the walls of our houses been adorned with examples of effete Old World portrait gravure."

Short for rotogravure.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.