1. style of 19C painting: a late 19th-century style of painting in which a picture is constructed from dots of pure color that blend, at a distance, into recognizable shapes and various color tones. Pointillism developed out of impressionism and its best-known exponent is the French painter Georges Seurat.
2. musical composition technique: a technique of musical composition using sparse isolated notes in widely varying registers
[Early 20th century. < French pointillisme, via pointiller "mark with dots" < Latin punctum "dot"]
