silhouette: [18] The term silhouette commemorates the name of the French author and politician Étienne de Silhouette (1709–67). As finance minister in the late 1750s he gained a reputation for cheeseparing, and silhouette came to be used for anything skimped. One account of the application of the word to a ‘simple cut-out picture’ is that it carries on this notion of ‘simplicity’ or ‘lack of finish’, but an alternative theory is that Silhouette himself was in the habit of making such pictures. The metaphorical use of the term for a ‘dark image against a bright background’ emerged in the mid-19th century. [silhouette etymology, silhouette origin, 英语词源]