mimetic
Americanadjective
-
characterized by, exhibiting, or of the nature of imitation or mimicry.
mimetic gestures.
-
mimic or make-believe.
adjective
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of, resembling, or relating to mimesis or imitation, as in art, etc
-
biology of or exhibiting mimicry
Other Word Forms
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."
Vocabulary lists containing mimetic
The Suffix -ic, Part 4
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"Hamlet's Dull Revenge," Vocabulary from the literary criticism
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"Hamlet's Dull Revenge" by René Girard
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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.
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
“Not chameleon, but it’s a good guess. We thought maybe octopus? They have incredible mimetic capabilities, but it wasn’t that, either.”
From "Boy 2.0" by Tracey Baptiste
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
