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
Jim Burke's Academic Vocabulary List
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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:
And besides, there’s a theory that, with the meow, the cats were evolving to imitate us.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 9, 2026
You’re trying to communicate something to a group that doesn’t want you to communicate to them, but, instead, wants you to simply imitate or channel angsty teenage feelings—that’s really childish.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 24, 2026
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
I used to imitate my brother by swinging high and doing backflips off that play set, soaring through the air.
From "Courage to Soar" by Simone Biles
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
The scene she depicts even imitates her real life: Kahlo actually kept a smaller, papier-mâché skeleton atop her own canopy bed in Mexico City as a reassuring symbol of death’s ubiquity.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 21, 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
In some of his portraits he imitates the Japanese style he loves: framing the head in surprising ways, using strong colors.
From "Vincent and Theo: The Van Gogh Brothers" by Deborah Heiligman
Coltrane singlehandedly made the soprano saxophone the popular jazz instrument it is today, exceeding Sonny Rollins’s influence on tenor saxophone and replacing Charlie Parker as jazz’s most imitated saxophone player.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 11, 2026
Life imitated art for Cyrus, who became a global pop star off the back of the show's success.
From BBC ● Feb. 18, 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
Often imitated, never duplicated, a ring from Spinelli Kilcollin is both classic and subversive enough to be interesting for decades to come.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 4, 2025
Moss imitated one of Njemile’s moms, and he fixed his face with a wrinkled frown.
From "Anger Is a Gift" by Mark Oshiro
"Triple threat. Go big or go home. Life imitating art."
From BBC ● Aug. 19, 2026
Come on, play something,’” Hopkins said, imitating the wince he gave Fenton at the time.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 11, 2026
The second is that a machine can demonstrate intelligence by successfully imitating a human in conversation, an idea that later became known as the Turing test.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 14, 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 was imitating this particular warrior to make fun of him.
From "Facing the Lion" by Joseph Lemasolai Lekuton and Herman Viola
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.
