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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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:
AI models can adopt unique personalities, hold memories of past conversations and imitate language accurately enough to pass for a human.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 24, 2026
"I don't want to imitate him but I try to resemble him," she said of her uncle.
From Barron's ● Sep. 27, 2026
Quantum simulators are especially useful for this kind of work because researchers can precisely control them and program them to imitate physical processes that occur at atomic and subatomic scales.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 26, 2026
“The goal shouldn’t be to simply imitate traditional film or television,” said von Schwarz.
From Slate ● Sep. 26, 2026
He starts to walk again, so I imitate his pace.
From "Starfish" by Akemi Dawn Bowman
Researchers have created a hollow CdS@polydopamine nanoreactor that imitates two important features of living cells.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 6, 2026
The hopefuls included the daughter of late autocrat Alberto Fujimori, a comedian who imitates his rivals, a fugitive, and a business magnate who has adopted the nickname Porky because of his chubby face.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 13, 2026
We’ll all find out together if, with the original stock market superstition, life actually imitates art.
From Barron's ● Mar. 13, 2026
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
His habits, like those of Henry David Thoreau, were widely discussed but seldom imitated.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 23, 2026
“So many of Flynn’s films are supposedly his life being imitated in art, and that was kind of like the last instance of that, in a very sordid way,” O’Brien said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 2, 2026
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
The fakes imitated brands like Bvlgari, Cartier, Louis Vuitton, and Tiffany & Co, and generated an estimated $1.14m in illicit profits for the counterfeit syndicate.
From BBC ● Jul. 5, 2026
He imitated me, both elbows going up and down.
From "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" by Maya Angelou
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
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
Ron gaped at him for a moment, then rounded on Hermione, imitating her voice.
From "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" by J.K. Rowling
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Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
