mimicry
(ˈmɪmɪkrɪ)
Also 7 mimmickry.
[f. mimic n. + -ry.]
1. a. The action, practice, or art of mimicking or closely imitating, either in sport or otherwise, the manner, gesture, speech, or mode of action of persons, or the superficial characteristics of a thing.
| 1709 Steele Tatler No. 38 ¶6 A wretched Belief, That their Mimickry passes for Real Business, or True Wit. 1810 Scott Lady of L. ii. xxvi, The chase I follow far, 'Tis mimicry of noble war. 1829 Cunningham Brit. Paint. i. 58 Mimickry, common to all children, was remarkable in me. 1870 Huxley Lay Serm. iii. (1874) 49 The successful mimicry of the measure of a Greek song. 1903 R. D. Shaw Pauline Epist. 175 A learned and distinguished Comedian..daily went through his antics and mimicry on the Capitol. |
b. in mimicry of: in imitation of.
| 1814 Southey Roderick viii. 107 As if in mimickry of insect play. 1839 Thirlwall Greece xlviii. VI. 139 [He] wore a lion's skin, and armed himself with a club, in mimicry of Hercules. |
c. An act, instance, or mode of mimicking. Also concr. a production by which something is mimicked.
| 1687 N. N. Old Popery 17 Those trivial upstart Mimmickries of them [sc. the Roman Church] practiced only within the narrow Limits of the Church of England. 1711 Addison Spect. No. 169 ¶4 We shall find it [Good-Breeding] to be nothing else but an Imitation and Mimickry of Good-nature. 1774 Goldsm. Nat. Hist. (1776) IV. 219 They [sc. monkeys] soon begin to exert all their sportive mimickries. 1877 Shields Final Philos. 236 The Latin apologists..had denounced the myths and oracles of paganism as Satanic mimicries. 1879 C. H. Wilson in Encycl. Brit. X. 673/2 In France an imitative school..has executed mimicries of ancient glass painting. |
2. Zool. A close external resemblance which a living creature (or sometimes a nest, etc.) bears to a different animal, or to some inanimate object. Also used of similar resemblances in plants.
| 1861 H. W. Bates in Trans. Linn. Soc. XXIII. 509 note, The author [Rössler] enumerates many very singular cases of mimicry; he also states his belief that the mimicry is intended to protect the insects from their enemies. 1893 Newton Dict. Birds s.v. Mimicry, We must always remember that the Mimicry, however produced, is unconscious. 1931 R. N. Chapman Animal Ecol. viii. 190 It seems likely that many controversies over protective coloration, mimicry, and resemblance might find the solution if they were investigated from the viewpoint of their contributions to the maintenance of the population of the species. 1951 Dict. Gardening (R. Hort. Soc.) III. 1304/1 There is often such resemblance between plants which themselves possess no special protective apparatus and those that do as to suggest that ‘mimicry’ occurs among them in the same way as it does among insects. 1966 E. Palmer Plains of Camdeboo xvi. 268 Some plants are barely recognizable as plants at all, and these are the mimicry plants which are some of the most famous plants in the world. 1968 R. D. Martin tr. Wickler's Mimicry in Plants & Animals x. 100 Some insects resembling ants live within the society of ants and devour their hosts. This latter case would seem to be a case of aggressive mimicry. 1975 Nature 17 Jan. 191/1 Mimicry is a phenomenon of evolutionary convergence or parallelism by which an edible mimic species gains some measure of protection from predators by virtue of its close resemblance to a model species which is unpalatable (that is, distasteful or dangerous). |