mug shot

Originally American; compound of mug (“face”) + shot (“snapshot”). Compare mug (“portrait”).

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mug shot (plural mug shots)

1. A photograph taken of the head and shoulders, often from the front and in profile, usually taken in conjunction with somebody's arrest.
   • 2002, Carolyne Wright, Greatest Hits 1975-2001‎, page 32:

     All Summer Johnny was Prince of the penny arcade, arms around me on the tilt-a-whirl, mug-shot grins in the quarter photo booth, twanging his guitar for street kids on the hill who scored baggies of hashish and Panama Red.

   • 2006 October 2, Edward C. Baig, Macs For Dummies‎, page 204:

     The buddy list has a bunch of visual status clues. Your buddy may have included a mug shot, perhaps through Photo Booth.

   • 2008, Johanne Lamoureux, PRECARIOUS VISUALITIES New Perspectives on Identification in Contemporary Art and Visual Culture: Ending Myths and the Catholic Outing of Andy Warhol‎, page 114:

     All these parameters of the series (the mug shot, the means of mechanical reproduction, the desirability of the outlawed, the reversal of law and desire and even the photo booth) are unmistakably present in Genet’s Our Lady of the Flowers.

   • 2022 July, Marianne Paley, Betrayed!‎:

     After waiting some five hours to be called forward on an unusually hot, humid Summer’s day in London (I believe temperatures soared to around 30 degrees Centigrade or around 90F), I presented my mug shot to the perky female jobs-worth official.

• mug-shotted

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