mimetic, a. (and n.)
(maɪˈmɛtɪk)
[ad. Gr. µῑ́µητικός, f. µῑ́µεῖσθαι to imitate: see mimesis.]
A. adj.
1. Addicted to or having an aptitude for mimicry or imitation. Also, pertaining to imitation.
| 1637 Whiting Albino & Bellama 9 But Fucus, lead by most mimetick Apes, Could not depinge Don Fuco's antick shapes. 1762 Goldsm. Cit. W. lxxix, The mimetic troops..begin their campaign [at the theatres] when all the others quit the field. 1769 R. Wood Ess. Genius Homer To Rdr. 2 We shall confine our inquiry to Homer's Mimetick Powers. 1843 Carlyle Heroes (1858) 316 Chatham himself lives the strangest mimetic life, half-hero, half-quack, all along. 1845 R. W. Hamilton Pop. Educ. iv. (ed. 2) 70 The..mimetic tendency of infancy. 1876 Geo. Eliot Dan. Der. lxii, Crying when she expected him to cry, and reflecting every phase of her feeling with mimetic susceptibility. |
2. Characterized by, or of the nature of, imitation.
| 1669 Gale Crt. Gentiles i. iii. i. 18 Mimetic Poesie: which the Platonists distribute into..Eicastic, and..Phantastic. 1744 Harris Three Treat. Wks. (1841) 33 The mimetic art of poetry has been hitherto considered, as fetching its imitation from mere natural resemblance. 1884 H. Jennings Phallicism ix. 99 Among the Greeks all dancing was of the mimetic kind. 1899 Allbutt's Syst. Med. VII. 338 Cases..in which with lesion of the optic thalamus there has been no defect in the mimetic movements. |
3. = mimic a. 3.
| 1756 J. G. Cooper in World No. 159 V. 169 They may be enabled to make an exit as they have lived, in mimetic grandeur. 1841 D'Israeli Amen. Lit. (1859) I. 59 When the Duke of Normandy visited..Edward the Confessor, he beheld in England a mimetic Normandy. 1892 Stevenson Across the Plains 266 A false and merely mimetic poverty. |
4. a. Zool. and Bot. Of animals or plants: Characterized by ‘mimicry’ or resemblance in external appearance to some essentially different animal or plant, or to some inorganic object. Of appearances or processes: Of the nature of ‘mimicry’.
| 1851 Woodward Mollusca i. 56 A second class of analogical resemblances are purely external and illusive, they have been termed mimetic. 1861 H. W. Bates in Trans. Linn. Soc. XXIII. 502 Mimetic analogies..are resemblances in external appearance, shape and colours between members of widely distinct families. 1870 Nicholson Man. Zool. Gen. Introd. §7 (1875) 19 It appears that the mimetic species is protected from some enemy by its outward similarity to the form which it mimics. 1882 Garden 28 Jan. 53/2 There are also cases of mimetic variation. |
b. Path. (See quots.)
| 1856 Mayne Expos. Lex., Mimetic, applied to diseases that resemble, or appear like imitations of others. |
c. Cryst. (See quot. 1888.)
| 1881 W. J. Lewis in Nature No. 616. 355 Twin and mimetic crystals. 1888 Teall Brit. Petrogr. 440 Mimetic. Tschermak proposed to call those crystals mimetic which possess externally a high degree of symmetry, but are built up by polysynthetic twinning of crystals having a low grade of symmetry. Thus chabasite is termed a mimetic rhombohedral crystal. 1895 Story-Maskelyne Crystallogr. Index, Mimetic crystals. |
5. Gram. (See quot.) rare.
| 1877 March Comp. Ags. Gram. §40. 27 Mimetic changes are those occurring through the influence of other words. |
† B. n. ? A mime, buffoon.
| 1631 R. H. Arraignm. Whole Creature Ep. Ded. 8 It is rather fit for the Mimeticks to dispute, then for mee to determine. |