raster

American  

[ras-ter] / ˈræs tər /

noun

1. Television. a pattern of scanning lines covering the area upon which the image is projected in the cathode-ray tube or liquid crystal display of a television set or other screen.

2. Digital Technology. a set of horizontal lines composed of individual pixels, used to form an image on a screen or in matrix printing.

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raster British  

/ ˈræstə /

noun

1. a pattern of horizontal scanning lines traced by an electron beam, esp on a television screen

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verb

1. to use web-based technology to turn a digital image into a large picture composed of a grid of black and white dots

Etymology

Origin of raster

First recorded in 1950–55; from German, from Latin rāstrum “toothed hoe, rake,” derivative of rādere “to scratch, scrape”

Example Sentences

There’s no trickery going on — I’m not changing a raster image with Photoshop or anything.

From The Verge • May 6, 2022

Bottom, raster plots, with time linearly warped between the onset and the offset of the sound.

From Nature • Mar. 28, 2017

The key difference is that Google Maps on iOS 5, because it uses raster graphics, needs repeated downloads.

From The Guardian • Sep. 28, 2012

Onscreen, the car is constantly “acquiring” targets, surrounding them in red boxes, tracing raster lines to and fro, a freeway version of John Madden’s Telestrator.

From Forbes • Feb. 8, 2012

To disappear or dissolve; the    image that goes with it is of an object breaking up into raster    lines and static and then dissolving.

From The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0, 24 Jul 1996 by Raymond, Eric S.