Paint-by-numbers

adj

adj ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Made from a painting by numbers kit. not-comparable
  2. 2
    By rote, without thought or creativity. figuratively, not-comparable

    "Though flawed by a paint-by-numbers methodology, the security classification process, so frequently sought by nineteenth century humanitarians, has resulted in an array of medium and minimum security jails feeding into scores of community corrections facilities on quiet streets across the country."

Example

More examples

"Though flawed by a paint-by-numbers methodology, the security classification process, so frequently sought by nineteenth century humanitarians, has resulted in an array of medium and minimum security jails feeding into scores of community corrections facilities on quiet streets across the country."

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