To make something appear shorter or compressed by drawing or depicting it at an angle; to reduce something's apparent length or duration.
Combining 'fore-' (before, in front) and 'shorten' (to make shorter). This artistic and linguistic term emerged during the Renaissance when European artists developed perspective techniques to create realistic depth in paintings.
When you look at a superhero lying down and pointing at you in a comic book, their arm looks impossibly long and weird—that's foreshortening, an artistic trick that makes objects pointing toward you appear compressed, and Michelangelo was absolutely obsessed with mastering it to show off his skill!
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