mimetic

American  

[mi-met-ik, mahy-] / mɪˈmɛt ɪk, maɪ- /

adjective

1. characterized by, exhibiting, or of the nature of imitation or mimicry.

   mimetic gestures.

2. mimic or make-believe.

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mimetic British  

/ mɪˈmɛtɪk /

adjective

1. of, resembling, or relating to mimesis or imitation, as in art, etc

2. biology of or exhibiting mimicry

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Other Word Forms

• mimetically adverb
• nonmimetic adjective
• nonmimetically adverb
• unmimetic adjective
• unmimetically adverb

Etymology

Origin of mimetic

1625–35; < Greek mīmētikós imitative, equivalent to mīmē- ( see mimesis) + -tikos -tic

Explanation

Mimetic things imitate or echo something else. A mimetic pattern on the wings of a bird might look just like the pattern on tree bark or the leaves of a plant. You'll most often find the adjective mimetic in technical or scholarly writing, discussing mimetic designs and characteristics in nature. Or you might refer to mimetic techniques in art and writing. Sometimes literary realism in novels and poetry is described as mimetic, since it reflects or echoes what really happens in the world. Mimetic comes from the Greek root mimetikos, "good at imitating."

Example Sentences

Our big, warm climate and our wide-open spaces made possible something that earned its own genre: mimetic architecture, whimsical buildings that look like something else, often the thing that they sell.

From Los Angeles Times • Aug. 8, 2025

Prince, a professor in Waterloo's Department of Chemical Engineering, utilized these human-tissue mimetic hydrogels to promote the growth of small-scale tumour replicas derived from donated tumour tissue.

From Science Daily • Feb. 12, 2024

At some level, it really, really means that this spoken system and even sign system that we do needs the mimetic system that we create when we gesture.

From Salon • Jul. 8, 2023

But Magritte suggests that art is always mimetic, if not of the external world then at the very least of consciousness.

From Washington Post • Jul. 28, 2022

All these consequences of radiation have been duplicated in laboratory studies by a large group of chemicals known as radio- mimetic or radiation-imitating.

From "Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson