the shape of somebody or something a body as it appears against a lighter background
a portrait in profile cut from dark material and mounted on a light background
French silhouette, named after Étienne de Silhouette d.1767, French controller-general of finances. One suggestion is that Silhouette was notorious for his parsimony in matters of public expenditure, and that his name was first applied to things made cheaply. It then became attached to ‘silhouettes’ because they were not painted portraits but were cut out of paper