Shinichirō Watanabe once considered making an anime about Christopher Columbus, but came to the conclusion that not even anime was expressive enough to properly portray the surreal greatness of Columbus's exploits.
Source: tatoeba (563611)
Portray
//pɔːˈtɹeɪ//
Synonyms for "portray" (88 found)
Ranked by relevance and common usage.
Closest matches (18)
Strong matches (26)
Related words (44)
Related word relations
OpenGloss and ConceptNet supply richer edges like generalizations, collocations, and derivations.
More general
4 entriesSynonyms
1 entriesRelated terms
2 entriesderived
5 entrieshas context
1 entriesmanner of
1 entriesrelated to
23 entriesShowing 16 of 23 words.
Translations
44 translations across 21 languages.
Ancient Greek
1 entries- εἰκάζω verb (to paint or draw the likeness of)
Azerbaijani
1 entries- qələmə almaq verb (figuratively: to describe in words)
Bulgarian
4 entries- играя роля verb (to play a role)
- изобразя́вам verb (to paint or draw the likeness of)
- обрисувам verb (figuratively: to describe in words)
- описвам verb (figuratively: to describe in words)
Chinese Mandarin
1 entries- 扮演 verb (to play a role)
Dutch
1 entries- portretteren verb (to paint or draw the likeness of)
Esperanto
2 entries- portreti verb (to paint or draw the likeness of)
- prezenti verb (figuratively: to describe in words)
Finnish
3 entries- esittää verb (to play a role)
- kuvailla verb (figuratively: to describe in words)
- piirtää kuva (jonkun/jonkin) verb (to paint or draw the likeness of)
French
4 entries- décrire verb (figuratively: to describe in words)
- dépeindre verb (to paint or draw the likeness of)
- portraire verb (to paint or draw the likeness of)
- représenter verb (to paint or draw the likeness of)
Galician
1 entries- retratar verb (to paint or draw the likeness of)
German
3 entries- abmalen verb (to paint or draw the likeness of)
- porträtieren verb (to paint or draw the likeness of)
- porträtieren verb (figuratively: to describe in words)
Greek
2 entries- απεικονίζω verb (to paint or draw the likeness of)
- ἐϊκάσδω verb (to paint or draw the likeness of)
Hungarian
3 entries- lefest verb (figuratively: to describe in words)
- leír verb (figuratively: to describe in words)
- megfest verb (to paint or draw the likeness of)
Korean
1 entries- 묘사하다 verb (figuratively: to describe in words)
Lower Sorbian
1 entries- wótmólowaś verb (to paint or draw the likeness of)
Malagasy
2 entries- mampiseho verb (to paint or draw the likeness of)
- maneho an-tsary verb (to paint or draw the likeness of)
Polish
3 entries- opisywać verb (figuratively: to describe in words)
- portretować verb (to paint or draw the likeness of)
- portretować verb (figuratively: to describe in words)
Portuguese
1 entries- retratar verb (to paint or draw the likeness of)
Russian
2 entries- изобража́ть verb (to play a role)
- изобрази́ть verb (to paint or draw the likeness of)
Serbo-Croatian
1 entries- portretirati verb (to paint or draw the likeness of)
Spanish
1 entries- retratar verb (to paint or draw the likeness of)
Swedish
4 entries- gestalta verb (to play a role)
- porträttera verb (to paint or draw the likeness of)
- porträttera verb (figuratively: to describe in words)
- porträttera verb (to play a role)
Sample sentences
13 total sentences available.
In this film they both portray notorious gang leaders.
Source: tatoeba (3661106)
I still can't work out what the artist intended to portray.
Source: tatoeba (3661112)
Unfortunately, the Internet gives extremists and intolerants of all persuasions an equal opportunity to portray wrongful and dangerous views.
Source: tatoeba (5459823)
Showing 4 of 13 available sentences.
Keep exploring
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.