A picture made by cutting a design into a flat block of wood, putting ink on the block, and pressing paper against it. The word normally means the printed picture on the paper, but people also use it for the cut block itself, and for the whole method: 'a woodcut of a wave', 'he works in woodcut'. Because everything that isn't cut away holds the ink, woodcuts have a strong, bold look — thick black lines, sharp edges, big flat areas. It's one of the oldest ways of printing pictures, used for hundreds of years in Europe, China and Japan; Japanese ukiyo-e prints are the most famous examples. You meet the word mainly in art museums, art classes, and books about old printing.