Other forms: profiles
Your profile is your public page on an app or website — name, photograph and details about you. Update your profile, a profile picture, view her profile.
The word is now more often used this way than in any other. Its older senses are alive too: a profile is a side view of a face — in profile, a profile portrait — and a written account of somebody in a newspaper: a profile of the new chief executive. High profile and low profile describe how visible somebody chooses to be. Note profiling, which in policing means judging people by group characteristics and is contested.
1nounprofileYour public page on an app or website.
“Update your profile with a recent photo so friends can find you.”
2nounsideA side view of a face.
“The coin shows the queen in profile.”
3nounaccountA written account of a person.
“The profile ran to four pages and told you nothing.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
profile is an outline or account.
Italian profilo meant an outline drawn round something, from a Latin verb meaning to draw a thread along. A profile has always been a line traced round the edge, which is what a side view of a face is.
Latin
pro — before
Italian
profilo — a border
French
profil
English, today
profile
Built from
From French profil, from Italian profilo (“a border”), later also proffilo (“a side-face, profile”), from Latin pro (“before”) + filo (“a line, stroke, thread”), from filum (“a thread”); see file. a doublet of purfle.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA