adjective
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imitating or tending to imitate or copy
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characterized by imitation
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copying or reproducing the features of an original, esp in an inferior manner
imitative painting
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another word for onomatopoeic
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of imitative
From the Late Latin word imitātīvus, dating back to 1575–85. See imitate, -ive
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.
The SEC called the settlement the third in its EPS Imitative, which uses risk-based data analysis to uncover potential accounting and disclosure violations resulting from so-called "earnings management," among other things.
From Reuters • Aug. 24, 2021
Imitative skills are essential in a place where storytelling, and the caricaturing of your fellow citizens, is what transforms a seemingly uneventful backwater into a soap opera of endless fascination.
From New York Times • Sep. 17, 2018
Friday, 7:30: “The Imitative Game – Counterpoint through the Ages.”
From Washington Post • Apr. 15, 2016
In 1976 the journal Pediatrics ran a paper titled “The Consequences of Imitative Behavior in Children: The Evel Knievel Syndrome.”
From New York Times • May 3, 2011
Imitative essays in its style kept appearing for two hundred years after it, till Wordsworth and other poets who knew the country drove its unrealities out of literature.
From English Literature: Modern Home University Library of Modern Knowledge by Mair, G. H. (George Herbert)
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.
