Dictionary

visuality en · NOUN

Etymology

From visual + -ity, from Latin visualitas.

Meanings

1. (countable, uncountable) The quality of being visual
   • Not the general whole only; every compartment of it is worked out, with intense earnestness, into truth, into clear visuality. 1840, Thomas Carlyle, Heroes and Hero Worship:
   • The scope of his mental visuality no longer included the figure of the agent from the private detective bureau. 1912, Frederic Stewart Isham, A Man and His Money:
   • We are now in the middle of a second Gutenberg shift — from book fluency to screen fluency, from literacy to visuality. 2008 November 23, Kevin Kelly, “Becoming Screen Literate”, in New York Times:
2. (countable, uncountable) Physical appearance.
   • After all, her "visuality" is that of a "narrative image" — the bruised, abused, and overused but essentially young and sensuous, primitively vital female figure that carries the burden of the narrative movement and whose consumption brings about the narrative closure. 1997, Sheldon H. Lu, Transnational Chinese Cinemas: Identity, Nationhood, Gender (page 353)
3. (countable, uncountable) vision (mental picture)

Forms