Thread: Spanish for "passepartout"

I always call it the cardboard frame (marco de cartulina/cartón). I have found out that they also call it paspartú!

Passepartout es un papel o, más usualmente, hoja de cartulina con un recorte, como marco de una fotografía debajo de un cristal. La imagen (foto, pintura, etc.) se coloca debajo. El passepartout sirve a dos propósitos: prevenir del toque de la foto con el vidrio, y mejorar la apariencia visual de la foto. La palabra también se usa para la cinta usada para pegar el revés de la imagen al marco.

Hi Micu,
masculine! El paspartú.

Hello,
We say passepartout in Sweden, from the French passe-partout. I think it is an art term, a jargon of sorts - maybe that's the reason why it's so similar in the different languages..?

I searched around the Internet, and found some perhaps more commonly used(?) words in English; one of them being "mat" ("to mat a picture", "matting and framing a picture").
I don't know whether this is American or British English (or universal), but probably the first.
"Mat" could be confused with something else though, like the thing one has on the floor. ....maybe one should specify with "art mat".

A British English option is "picture mount" ("to mount and frame a picture"), where the uncut material for the passepartout is called "mountboard". But to "mount a picture" could simply mean adhering a picture onto some kind of backing board, and could possibly lead to misunderstandings.

To me, these synonyms sound rather ambiguous and a bit unclear, while passepartout is more specific. Still, I hope this can be useful in some way to someone. At least I have learnt something new.