Verb

(en verb)

To present again or anew; to present by means of something standing in the place of; to exhibit the counterpart or image of; to typify.

To portray by pictorial or plastic art; to delineate; as, to represent a landscape in a picture, a horse in bronze, and the like.

To portray by mimicry or action of any kind; to act the part or character of; to personate; as, to represent Hamlet.

To stand in the place of; to supply the place, perform the duties, exercise the rights, or receive the share, of; to speak and act with authority in behalf of; to act the part of (another); as, an heir represents his ancestor; an attorney represents his client in court; a member of Congress represents his district in Congress.

To exhibit to another mind in language; to show; to give one's own impressions and judgement of; to bring before the mind; to set forth; sometimes, to give an account of; to describe.

He represented that he was investigating for the police department.

To serve as a sign or symbol of; as, mathematical symbols represent quantities or relations; words represent ideas or things.

To bring a sensation of into the mind or sensorium; to cause to be known, felt, or apprehended; to present.

To form or image again in consciousness, as an object of cognition or apprehension (something presentative, which was originally apprehended by direct presentation).

(Webster 1913)

Verb

(en verb)

(obsolete) To spread out, to unfurl.

* 1590 , Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene , II.v:

The wearie Traueiler, wandring that way, / Therein did often quench his thristy heat, / And then by it his wearie limbes display , / Whiles creeping slomber made him to forget / His former paine [...].

To show conspicuously; to exhibit; to demonstrate; to manifest.

* , chapter=12

, title= The Mirror and the Lamp , passage=All this was extraordinarily distasteful to Churchill. It was ugly, gross. Never before had he felt such repulsion when the vicar displayed his characteristic bluntness or coarseness of speech. In the present connexion […] such talk had been distressingly out of place.}}

* {{quote-book, year=1963, author=(Margery Allingham), title=(The China Governess)

, chapter=1 citation , passage=The huge square box, parquet-floored and high-ceilinged, had been arranged to display a suite of bedroom furniture designed and made in the halcyon days of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, […].}}

To make a display; to act as one making a show or demonstration.

(Shakespeare)

(military) To extend the front of (a column), bringing it into line.

(Farrow)

(printing, dated) To make conspicuous by using large or prominent type.

(obsolete) To discover; to descry.

* Chapman

And from his seat took pleasure to display / The city so adorned with towers.