Other forms: frames, framed, framing
A frame is the stiff part that holds everything else together: the wooden edge round a picture, the tubes a bicycle is built from, the timber skeleton inside a house. You hang a photo in a frame and you look out through a window frame.
As a verb, to frame is to put that border round something — she framed the drawing. It also means to put an idea into words a chosen way: you frame a question, frame an argument, frame a problem as a choice between two things. In crime stories it turns darker, meaning to plant evidence so that an innocent person takes the blame — he was framed. Two set phrases carry meanings of their own: a frame of mind is the mood you are in, and a time frame is the stretch of time you have to work in. And a single still picture inside a film is a frame, thousands of them flicking past to make the movement.
1nounrigidThe rigid structure that surrounds or supports something, such as a picture, a window, a bicycle or a building.~85%
“The bicycle frame is aluminium, which is why it weighs almost nothing.”
2verbframeTo put a border or frame around something.~2%
“She had the map framed and hung it above the stairs.”
3verbexpressTo express something in a chosen way, so that it is understood from a particular angle.~6%
“The lawyer framed the whole case as a question of fairness.”
4verbinnocentTo make an innocent person appear guilty by arranging false evidence against them.~2%
“He spent nine years in prison before proving he had been framed.”
5nounsingleOne of the single still pictures that together make up a film or video.~5%
“Pause it and go back one frame — you can see the wire.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 21 sentences found in the wild and placed 18 of them on a sense (3 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
frame is a supporting structure.
Frame comes from Middle English framen and Old English framian, which meant to profit, to advance, to push forward — from Proto-Germanic *framjaną, 'to further, promote, perform', and a Proto-Indo-European root *promo- meaning 'front, forward'. The same root gave English the little word from. What you frame you first push into shape.
Proto-Indo-European
*promo- — front, forward
Proto-Germanic
*framjaną — to further, promote, perform
Proto-West Germanic
*frammjan
Old English
framian
Middle English
framen
English, today
frame
Built from
From Middle English framen, fremen, fremmen (“to construct, build, strengthen, refresh, perform, execute, profit, avail”), from Old English framian, fremian, fremman (“to profit, avail, advance”), from Proto-West Germanic frammjan, from Proto-Germanic framjaną (“to further, promote, perform”), from Proto-Indo-European promo- (“front, forward”). Cognate with Low German framen (“to commit, effect”), Danish fremme (“to promote, further, perform”), Swedish främja (“to promote, encourage, foster”), Icelandic fremja (“to commit”). More at from.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA