imitate
Americanverb (used with object)
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imitates,
present (3rd person singular)
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imitated,
past participle, past
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imitating
present participle
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to follow or endeavor to follow as a model or example.
to imitate an author's style; to imitate an older brother.
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to mimic; impersonate.
The students imitated the teacher behind her back.
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to make a copy of; reproduce closely.
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to have or assume the appearance of; simulate; resemble.
verb
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to try to follow the manner, style, character, etc, of or take as a model
many writers imitated the language of Shakespeare
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to pretend to be or to impersonate, esp for humour; mimic
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to make a copy or reproduction of; duplicate; counterfeit
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to make or be like; resemble or simulate
her achievements in politics imitated her earlier successes in business
Synonym Usage
Imitate, copy, duplicate, reproduce all mean to follow or try to follow an example or pattern. Imitate is the general word for the idea: to imitate someone's handwriting, behavior. To copy is to make a fairly exact imitation of an original creation: to copy a sentence, a dress, a picture. To duplicate is to produce something that exactly resembles or corresponds to something else; both may be originals: to duplicate the terms of two contracts. To reproduce is to make a likeness or reconstruction of an original: to reproduce a 16th-century theater.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
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imitabilitynoun
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imitatornoun
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overimitateverb (used with object)
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preimitateverb (used with object)
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imitableadjective
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nonimitatingadjective
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unimitatedadjective
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unimitatingadjective
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well-imitatedadjective
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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imitatesimple
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imitatessimple
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have imitatedperfect
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has imitatedperfect
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am imitatingprogressive
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are imitatingprogressive
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is imitatingprogressive
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have been imitatingperfect progressive
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has been imitatingperfect progressive
Past
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imitatedsimple
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had imitatedperfect
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was imitatingprogressive
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were imitatingprogressive
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had been imitatingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of imitate
First recorded in 1525–35; from Latin imitātus, past participle of imitārī “to copy,” presumably a frequentative akin to the base of imāgō image
Explanation
When you imitate someone, you copy them. Youth marketers capitalize on kids' desire to imitate––tweens imitate teens, teens imitate young adults, and marketers supply the product lines to make it easy. Humans learn by imitating others. Babies carefully watch their caregivers' lips, learning to imitate the movements they make to create language sounds. Writers often begin their careers imitating the style of older writers they admire.
Vocabulary lists containing imitate
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The Watsons Go to Birmingham
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
This is, of course, exactly the sort of interaction that restaurant apps are forever attempting to imitate.
From Salon ● Aug. 20, 2026
Unitree’s humanoid robots can walk, run and climb and “can imitate & reinforce the learning drive” said the company, referring to algorithms that train the robot’s artificial intelligence as it undertakes tasks.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 19, 2026
Because synthetic rotation can imitate motion beyond the speed of light, researchers now have a controlled laboratory platform for exploring physical regimes that would otherwise be impossible to study directly.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 12, 2026
Am I supposed to watch myself and imitate myself?
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 6, 2026
“Gentlemen!” boomed the voice Scipio loved to imitate because it sounded so much more impressive than his own.
From "The Thief Lord" by Cornelia Funke
Researchers have created a hollow CdS@polydopamine nanoreactor that imitates two important features of living cells.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 6, 2026
We’ll all find out together if, with the original stock market superstition, life actually imitates art.
From Barron's ● Mar. 13, 2026
On a recent test in Poland, a Polish air-defense crew flew a Merops at a target that imitates Shaheds but it missed.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 4, 2025
While AI-generated music is rife online, it's often released under fictitious names, or imitates big stars, but it doesn't normally appear on their official streaming pages.
From BBC ● Aug. 22, 2025
She gets up and imitates the host and makes a joke in Urdu.
From "Amina's Song" by Hena Khan
He entertained mass audiences so successfully that his murder mysteries, spy sagas and innocent-man-accused tales became their own genre: the Alfred Hitchcock Movie, often imitated but never equaled.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 31, 2026
His drip painting technique is one the art world's most recognisable and often imitated.
From BBC ● May 19, 2026
Life imitated art when, in 2019, Van Der Beek fulfilled the prophecy foretold by a “Don’t Trust the B—” storyline and became a contestant on “Dancing With the Stars.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 12, 2026
He said he hoped that the tax “would be an example for the world, to be imitated in many places.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 13, 2025
We discussed Mr. Hynning for years afterward and many of the men imitated the way he spoke to comic effect.
From "Long Walk to Freedom" by Nelson Mandela
Barnett, 41, returned to Radio 4's Today programme on Wednesday morning, explaining she had been absent in recent weeks because she was in hospital "in a case of life imitating work".
From BBC ● Aug. 19, 2026
He learned to stop imitating his favorite writers.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 29, 2026
According to the study, this is the first documented case of a spider imitating a parasitic fungus that infects other spiders.
From Science Daily ● Jun. 17, 2026
The song would only become even more synonymous with the president in 2022, when his hokey dance often done to the classic became so viral that athletes around the world began imitating it.
From Slate ● Jun. 11, 2026
I loved to hear Gladys's high, sweet voice imitating her favorite singers on the radio.
From "How the García Girls Lost Their Accents" by Julia Alvarez
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
