impasto

Borrowed from Italian impasto.

impasto (countable and uncountable, plural impastos)

1. (painting) The use of a thick-bodied paint to create peaks and crests that physically extend from the surface of a painting.
   • 1938, Norman Lindsay, Age of Consent, 1st Australian edition, Sydney, N.S.W.: Ure Smith, published 1962, →OCLC, page 63:

     He was thinking, ʽGot to get a subject where a man can weight the impasto in light. Paint thin against light. Got to remember that.ʼ

   • 1973, Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow, 1st US edition, New York: Viking Press, →ISBN, part 1: Beyond the Zero, page 5:

     […] all got scumbled together, eventually, by the knives of the seasons, to an impasto, feet thick, of unbelievable black topsoil in which anything could grow, not the least being bananas.

   • 2025 September 13, Jackie Wullschläger, “Portal to an abstract future or dry dead end?”, in FT Weekend, Life & Arts, page 15:

     These dully schematic yet sentimental misfortunes surround Van Gogh's “Sower”. He ploughs on, figure accentuated in deep impasto, across a field cast in blue shadow, chrome yellow corn merging with the sun.

• impastoed

• pastose

impasto (third-person singular simple present impastoes, present participle impastoing, simple past and past participle impastoed)

1. (painting) To paint in thick-bodied paint; to paint in impasto style.
   • 1991, Joyce Nakamura, Contemporary Authors Autobiographical Series, Volume 14‎^[1]:

     "She looked tall to me, and slim, with delicate Semitic features, and a full mouth that she impastoed with red lipstick to play against her […] "

• ampotis, matipos

• IPA^(key): /imˈpas.to/
• Rhymes: -asto
• Hyphenation: im‧pà‧sto

Deverbal from impastare +‎ -o.

impasto m (plural impasti)

1. mixture, dough, kneading, crumb
2. impasto

• impastare

Borrowed from Latin impastus, from im- (“not”) + pastus, past participle of pascī (“to eat, to feed”).

impasto (feminine impasta, masculine plural impasti, feminine plural impaste)

1. (literary, rare) not having eaten, fasting

impasto

1. first-person singular present indicative of impastare

• imposta