Virtuous English AcademyArts & Creativity — B1 English Vocabulary
This B1 vocabulary list gathers 40 intermediate English words about arts & creativity — painting, writing, music and the stage. Every word comes with a simple definition, its British-English pronunciation and a natural example sentence, so you learn each one in real context. When you are ready, open the flashcards to practise and remember them for good.
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Using arts & creativity words in English
Arts vocabulary is a good place to study English word families, because the roots on this page each produce three or four related words with different endings and different meanings. Imagination, imaginary and imaginative come from one verb and mean three quite separate things, and choosing the wrong one is a classic B1 error. The page also contains a noun-verb pair where only one letter changes: exhibit and exhibition.
What to watch out for
Imaginary, imaginative, imaginable
Imaginary means not real: an imaginary friend. Imaginative means full of good ideas: an imaginative solution. Imaginable means able to be imagined: every colour imaginable. All three come from imagine, and the noun is imagination. English does this constantly — compare economic against economical, and historic against historical.
Exhibit is the verb, exhibition is the event
Galleries exhibit work; the event itself is an exhibition. In British English an exhibit as a noun most often means one individual item on display, or a piece of evidence in court. Note the pronunciation: the h is silent in exhibit and exhibition, so they begin with the sound of egg. The related person is an exhibitor.
Inspiration, and the -ed and -ing split returns
You are inspired by something and the thing itself is inspiring — the same rule you met with bored and boring, and it applies to the whole emotional vocabulary of art: moved and moving, fascinated and fascinating. Note British spellings on this list: watercolour keeps the u, and abstract takes front stress as an adjective but back stress as a verb.
Words learners mix up
Three tables: four words for a picture and what each one actually names, the writing words where countability decides everything, and the four job titles that go wrong most often in spelling.
Four words for a picture
| Word | What it actually means | In a sentence |
|---|---|---|
| portrait | A picture of a person. It also names a page or screen that is taller than it is wide. | The gallery holds a famous portrait of the queen. |
| mural | A picture painted directly onto a wall. Countable, and it cannot be moved. | Local artists painted a mural on the school wall. |
| watercolour | Both the paint and the finished picture. British English keeps the u. | She paints delicate watercolours of the coast. |
| canvas | The cloth a painting is made on, and by extension the painting itself. | Three of his canvases hang in the same room. |
The spelling trap here is canvas against canvass: the second, with two s letters, means to go from door to door asking for votes or opinions and has nothing to do with art. Portrait is worth remembering for its second sense too, because printers and phone screens use it constantly, paired with landscape.
Writing: four words, four different behaviours
| Word | What it actually means | In a sentence |
|---|---|---|
| novel | A long work of fiction. Countable — and the adjective novel means new and original. | She has written five novels. |
| poem | Countable. One individual piece, and it takes by for the writer. | He read a poem at the wedding. |
| poetry | Uncountable. The whole art form, so poetries does not exist. | I have never enjoyed poetry much. |
| fiction | Uncountable. Stories that are invented, and the opposite is non-fiction. | The prize is for fiction only. |
The poem and poetry pair is the model for a whole family in English: one countable word for the individual item and one uncountable word for the art. Novel is the false friend on this list, because in several languages the equivalent word means a short story or a soap opera, and the English adjective meaning new is a separate word entirely.
Who made it: four job titles
| Word | What it actually means | In a sentence |
|---|---|---|
| playwright | Somebody who writes plays. The ending is -wright, meaning a maker, not -write. | The playwright was in the audience. |
| composer | Somebody who writes music. The verb is compose, and the result is a composition. | The composer conducted the first performance. |
| author | The writer of a book, and slightly more formal than writer. It also works as a verb in formal English. | The author signed copies afterwards. |
| curator | The person who chooses and arranges what an exhibition shows. The verb curate came later. | The curator gave us a tour. |
Playwright is one of the most misspelled words in English precisely because a playwright writes: the -wright ending is the old word for a maker, and it survives in shipwright and in the surname Wright. Curate as a verb has spread far beyond galleries in recent years and now describes selecting anything carefully.
Collocations that sound natural
Six words from the practical side of the arts. Two are collective nouns, one has a spelling that hides its vowels, and all six live inside fixed frames.
gallery
an art galleryat the gallerya gallery of portraitsthe National Gallery
Countable, and the preposition is at for the visit and in for what hangs there. British English distinguishes a gallery, which shows art, from a museum, which shows objects, though the line is blurred in practice.
masterpiece
a true masterpiecehis masterpiecean undisputed masterpiecea masterpiece of design
Countable, and it means the single best work somebody produced, not simply a very good one. The word comes from the piece a craftsman made to prove he was qualified, which is why it still implies the top of a career.
orchestra
play in an orchestraa symphony orchestraconduct an orchestrathe orchestra tunes up
Countable, and a collective noun: British English allows either a singular or a plural verb depending on whether you mean the body or the players. Musicians play in an orchestra, never at one.
rhythm
a steady rhythmkeep the rhythmget into a rhythmrhythm and blues
The spelling is worth practising letter by letter, since it contains only one vowel doing the work of two syllables. The figurative sense — get into a rhythm — applies to work and sport as readily as to music.
rehearsal
a dress rehearsalin rehearsalthe final rehearsalrehearse for a concert
The verb takes for and the noun takes in: the play is in rehearsal. A dress rehearsal is the last full run-through in costume, and the phrase is used figuratively for any practice attempt at something real.
audition
an audition for a partgo for an auditionaudition for a rolea successful audition
Countable, and both noun and verb take for. British English says go for an audition where American English often says go to. The person judging is holding auditions rather than taking them.
Where each word belongs
Seven words carrying a second sense, a British spelling or a tone that is not obvious. Arts vocabulary borrows freely from academic English, and the borrowed sense is often the commoner one.
- abstractThree fields, three sensesIn art it means not representing recognisable objects: abstract painting. In academic writing an abstract is the summary at the top of a paper. In grammar an abstract noun names something you cannot touch. The stress moves in the verb.
- aestheticFormal · British spelling and stressConcerned with beauty and how something looks. Britain keeps the ae where America often writes esthetic, and the stress falls on the second syllable. As a noun it names a whole visual style, which is now common in design writing.
- giftedApproving · especially about the youngHaving natural ability well beyond the average, and it is used most about children and young performers. British schools use gifted and talented as a fixed institutional phrase. About an adult professional the neutral word is skilled.
- artisticTwo senses · one of them a warningNeutral in artistic ability and artistic director. But an artistic temperament is a polite British way of saying somebody is difficult to work with, and the phrase is used with a certain dryness.
- handicraftSlightly dated · usually pluralObjects made skilfully by hand, and it appears mostly in the plural and in tourism writing: local handicrafts. Modern British English prefers crafts or handmade, and craft alone can also mean skill in general.
- literatureUncountable · and a very different second senseUncountable when it means written art, so English literature takes no article. Its second sense is entirely unglamorous: printed information from an organisation, as in we sent out some literature about the course.
- sculptureCountable and uncountableUncountable as an art form — she studied sculpture — and countable for one object: three sculptures in the courtyard. The person is a sculptor, with no u in the ending, and the verb sculpt is comparatively recent.
Sentences to try
Four frames about art and making things. Check that each word family member is doing the right job.
- The gallery is holding an exhibition of her early work.
- It was an imaginative use of very ordinary materials.
- The portrait is considered his masterpiece.
- She finds her inspiration in the landscape around her.
Questions about arts & creativity vocabulary
What is the difference between imaginary and imaginative?
Imaginary means it does not exist in reality: an imaginary country, an imaginary illness. Imaginative means showing creativity and original thought: an imaginative design, an imaginative child. A third form, imaginable, means capable of being imagined and usually follows the noun: the worst outcome imaginable. All three derive from imagine, and the abstract noun is imagination. English has many such trios, so it is worth checking the ending whenever a word looks nearly right.
Is it "exhibit" or "exhibition"?
Exhibit is normally the verb — The museum is exhibiting three new works — and exhibition is the event where work is shown: We went to an exhibition of Turner’s paintings. As a noun, exhibit refers to one individual item on display, and in a courtroom it means a piece of evidence. Note the pronunciation: the h is silent in both words, so exhibition starts with an egg sound rather than an ex-h sound.
How do I spell colour words in British English?
British English keeps the u: colour, watercolour, colourful, coloured. American English drops it: color, watercolor. The same split runs through favourite, behaviour, neighbour and humour. Note that the u disappears in some derived forms even in British English — coloration and humorous — which catches out learners who have learned the rule too firmly. On this site the British forms are used throughout.