You can picture a vignette as a small picture with no frame: a little curl of vine drawn at the top of a chapter, its edges softly into the white paper instead of stopping at a hard line. Three things are in that picture — it is small, it takes only a corner of the page, and its border is rather than drawn.
vignette 可以想成書頁上那一小塊沒有框的圖：一段葡萄藤畫在章節開頭，邊緣淡淡地散進白紙裡，沒有一條硬線把它圈起來。這個畫面裡有三件事——很小、只佔一角、邊界是化開的。後來這個字往不同方向走的時候，每一次都是抓住其中一件事帶著走。
From the word’s history
From French vignette, a diminutive of vigne (vine), from Latin vinea, from vinum (wine); first attested in English in 1751, replacing earlier Middle English vynet. The vine is literal: the earliest ones were drawn as leaves and tendrils.
來自法文 vignette，是 vigne（葡萄藤）的小稱，再往前是拉丁文 vinea、vinum（酒）。1751 年前後進入英文，取代了更早的中古英語 vynet。所以「藤蔓」不是比喻——最早的 vignette 畫的真的就是葉子和捲鬚。
Wiktionary, "vignette"
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