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Imitate   /ˈɪmətˌeɪt/   Listen
Imitate

verb
(past & past part. imitated; pres. part. imitating)
1.
Reproduce someone's behavior or looks.  Synonyms: copy, simulate.  "Children often copy their parents or older siblings"
2.
Appear like, as in behavior or appearance.
3.
Make a reproduction or copy of.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Imitate" Quotes from Famous Books



... I hate to be particular, and I think if a man cannot conform to the customs of the world, he is not fit to be encouraged or to live in it. I know that, if one would be agreeable to men of dignity one must study to imitate them, and I know which way they get money and places. I cannot indeed wonder that the talents requisite for a great statesman are so scarce in the world, since so many of those who possess them are every month cut off in the prime of their life at ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville

... her pass, and the way the hats fly off. Old Huz-and-Buz came pretty near to getting lynched the first week, for playing the smarty and drawling out as they went by, 'Miss Montmorency, I believe?' to imitate the way in which the Bishop introduced himself. I guess he won't be humorous again for a considerable spell. And now, Doctor, I hope I've put the ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... age of six-and-twenty-for six-and-twenty she was, though she vows she was only nineteen—in the prime and fulness of her beauty. Her forehead was vast, and her black hair waved over it with a natural ripple (that beauties of late days have tried to imitate with the help of the crimping-irons), and was confined in shining and voluminous braids at the back of a neck such as you see on the shoulders of the Louvre Venus—that delight of gods and men. Her eyes, when she lifted ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... the space of a minute, I have heard it imitate the woodlark, chaffinch, blackbird, thrush, and sparrow.... Their few natural notes resemble those of the nightingale, but their song is of greater compass and more varied."—Ashe, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... last words of this unique duet had died on the ear, Comical Codman on his distant perch straightened up, and, triumphantly clapping his sides like the boastful bird whose crowing he could so wonderfully imitate, raised his shrill, loud, and long-drawn kuk-kuk-ke-o-ho in a volume of sound that thrilled through the forest and sent its repeating echoes from hill to hill along the distant ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson

... half-year soon beginning again, Hector declared he should be ready to cut and run, and leave Captain Gordon and Maplewood to each other—and very well matched too! He was nearly in a state of mind to imitate that unprecedented boy, who wrote a letter to 'The ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge

... have only to throw a stone among the bushes and the singing commences again. I am not clever in describing musical sounds, and I cannot describe that of the sedge-warbler, nor can I always distinguish it from the song of its near relative the reed-warbler. Both imitate the songs of other birds, and their incessant warblings and babblings at night cause them to be often mistaken for nightingales. I have generally found the nest of the sedge-warbler on the ground, on a tuft of coarse grass or sedge; the nest of the reed-warbler is supported on four ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton

... were followed by a total rout of the King's troops. The Duke of Perth was appointed Lieutenant-general of the forces. After the engagement which ensued, when the heat of the contest was over, he distinguished himself in a manner in which every brave and loyal man would wish to imitate his example,—by saving the lives of the combatants. His tenantry, commanded by Lord Nairn, were among the most eager of the combatants on that day. When the defeat of the King's troops was manifest, a terrible carnage ensued. Some of the conquered threw down their ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson

... on the terraces, which are here greenly carpeted with sward, and tried to imitate with a pencil the inimitable attitudes of the chestnuts as they bear up their canopy of leaves. Ever and again a little wind went by, and the nuts dropped all around me, with a light and dull sound, upon the sward. The noise was as of a thin fall ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... and slave is perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part and degrading submission on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it. . . . The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of small slaves, gives a loose to the worst of passions, and thus nursed, educated, and ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer

... cry of the shriek-owl is exceedingly shrill, and can be heard at a great distance. A particular spot on the trail was designated, near which Crockett would seek his secret encampment. When Jack Thompson reached that spot, he was to imitate the cry of the owl. Crockett would respond, and thus guide the Indian to his retreat. As night approached, Crockett, with his party, found a deep and dark ravine, where, encircled by almost impenetrable thickets, he hid his men and the horses. No campfires could be built. It ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott

... of the Times has yet left Virtue many Votaries. Of their Protection you need not despair. May every head-strong Libertine whose Hands you reach, be reclaimed; and every tempted Virgin who reads you, imitate the Virtue, and meet the Reward of the high-meriting, tho' ...
— Samuel Richardson's Introduction to Pamela • Samuel Richardson

... of that of taxation, which the central republic possesses. If it possessed less, the empire would cease to be one body politic; if it continue to possess more, the colonies will be discontented at the want of self-government, and on the first occasion will imitate their brethren in America." The motion was negatived by 165 to 42. This vote is important as an indication of the sentiment of Parliament in regard to Colonial government.—A motion to form an ecclesiastical Constitution for the Australian ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various

... in this "crisis of our country's destiny," imitate the example of these heroic worthies, if "hereunto we ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... strew'd with flow'rs; each, with frantic joy, His garland forms, and throws it in the way. What pleasure, Phraates, must swell his bosom, To see the prostrate nation all around him, And know he's made them happy! to hear them Tease the Gods, to show'r their blessings on him! Happy Arsaces! fain I'd imitate Thy matchless worth, and be a ...
— The Prince of Parthia - A Tragedy • Thomas Godfrey

... la Meduse, and by Delacroix with the Dante et Virgile (1822) and the Massacre de Scio (1823). In music Berlioz, at this time a student in the Conservatoire, was fighting hard against Cherubini and the bewigged ones for liberty of expression and leave to admire and imitate the audacities of Weber and Beethoven, and three years hence, in the year of Hernani, was to set his mark upon the art with the Symphonie fantastique. On the stage as early as 1824 Frederick and Firmin had realised in the personages of ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley

... was really Antonia who saw all the plans and the desires of the Senora thoroughly carried out. It was her clever fingers and natural taste which gave to every room that air of comfort and refinement which all felt and admired, but which seemed to elude their power to imitate. ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr

... four other things, I never saw such work, or works. Campbell is lecturing—Moore idling—S * * twaddling—W * * drivelling—C * * muddling—* * piddling—B * * quibbling, squabbling, and snivelling. * * will do, if he don't cant too much, nor imitate Southey; the fellow has poesy in him; but he is envious, and unhappy, as all the envious are. Still he is among the best of the day. B * * C * * will do better by-and-by, I dare say, if he don't get spoiled by green ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron

... amusing in the extreme to see old fellows aping extreme juvenility, and professing to smoke before breakfast; and it is ridiculous to see young gentlemen, very young and very green, cigar in mouth, fancying it very manly and very independent to imitate a rough, weather-beaten sailor or soldier, who, not being able to smoke a cigar, sticks to the pipe. That it stupifies is certain, that it is very vulgar is more certain, and that it injures health is more certain still. I wonder if Father Matthew ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle

... great frugality. He was kindly, firm in friendship, faithful and tender in his family, ready to forgive enemies, just in decision. The caliphs who succeeded him, for some time, were men of great simplicity, and sought to imitate his virtues. He was doubtless warlike and fanatical, but conquests such as he and his successors made are incompatible with luxury and effeminacy. He stands arraigned at the bar of eternal justice for perverting truth, for blending it with error, for making ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord

... which some of the most heartbreaking stories in literature are treated. Thackeray was one of the sweetest and tenderest beings that ever lived, and no doubt his jocularity was assumed; but minor men take him seriously, and imitate him. Look at the stories of Frank Berry, of Rawdon Crawley, of Clive and Rosie Newcome, and of General Baynes—they are sad indeed, but the tragic element in them is only shadowed forth by the great master. There is nothing droll in the history of ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman

... wall at the point indicated was of plank, like the door, painted and sanded to imitate rock. He had no difficulty in finding the opening, and in a short time the boys were relieved of their bonds. Ned opened his eyes wide at sight of Dode, the fourth boy, and of Oliver, who had been ...
— The Boy Scout Camera Club - The Confession of a Photograph • G. Harvey Ralphson

... who once lived in them; and England has many heroes of the sword and pen whose lives each Englishman should study; and when you visit their dwelling-places you will recall their achievements, and perhaps endeavour to imitate their examples. Here is an instance of how little the villagers know of the distinguished men who once lived amongst them. The great Duke of Wellington did not live a very long time ago, and yet some friends of mine who were staying at ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield

... the same time to keep as close to the exact sense as the constraints of rime and meter would allow. In Nos. XI to XVII a somewhat perplexing problem was presented. The originals frequently have assonance instead of rime and the verse is sometimes crude in other ways. An attempt to imitate the assonances and crudities in modern German would simply have given the effect of bad verse-making. On the other hand, to translate into smooth tetrameters, with perfect rime everywhere, would have given ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas

... would impress upon you: It will not be the policy of The Roycrofters to imitate or copy. This place from now on is what we make it. The past is past, the future spreads a golden red against ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard

... an eye made of glass and very exquisitely fashioned to imitate reality. Its prevailing darkness had prevented the truth from appearing, and yet, perfect though it was in lustre and pigment, the false thing had given to Pendean's expression a quality that never failed to disturb Peter. It ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts

... you love to have a memento of them continually in your sight. Jim Crow is the representative of that injured race, and as such is the idol of your populace! See how they all sing his praises! how they imitate his peculiarities! how they repeat his name in their moments of leisure and relaxation! They even carve images of him to adorn their hearths, that his cause and his sufferings may never be forgotten! Oh, philanthropic ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... open for the convenience of the artisan who was screwing at the brass-plate. He moved aside, with the servility that always characterizes the worker in a city of idlers, and the party passed into a long narrow hall, whose walls were papered to imitate impossible blocks of mustard-coloured marble. The party was ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett

... of two sorts. One class merely abjured the practices and some of the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church while they remained Christians and endeavored to imitate as nearly as possible the simple life of Christ and the apostles. On the other hand, there were popular leaders who taught that the Christian religion was false. They held that there were two principles in the universe, the good and the evil, which were forever ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson

... had never been seen even in a meeting-house, unless at a lecture, political caucus, or some kindred rather than religious entertainment. Sharp was a rigid Presbyterian; but his rival had never thought it worth his while to pretend to imitate him in that particular. On the contrary, by keeping aloof, he found favor with the more numerous Methodists, the few Universalists, Baptists, Spiritualists, etc., which more or less abounded in the rapidly growing little town. To all these he could be all things. But as to the Catholic ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee

... declare the gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to the nations, and none of his successors in this high office has spoken with such persuasive power. Any one differs from St. Paul at his intellectual peril, and every one may imitate him with spiritual profit." ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson

... discourse I heard, have tended. In the New Testament there is the most beautiful and affecting history conceivable by man, and there are the terse models for all prayer and for all preaching. As to the models, imitate them, Sunday preachers—else why are they there, consider? As to the history, tell it. Some people cannot read, some people will not read, many people (this especially holds among the young and ignorant) find it hard to pursue the verse-form in which the book is presented ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... not the courage to imitate Luther. He has told us that he wanted courage; he again repeats it: he says that he, a plebeian, trifling as a man, and having but little learning, has nothing in him which could deserve celebrity. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various

... point that was to witness their sudden attack, Paul marshaled his followers in a compact mass. He meant to imitate in some degree the flying wedge used upon the football field with such ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren

... obscure, is to become amazed not only at the inevitable sequence of events, but at the interlinking of details, often far removed, into a marvelously intricate pattern which no art can hope to reproduce, and can only feebly imitate. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... back unto ourselves; Or else the image wheels itself around, When once unto the mirror it has come, Since the curved surface teaches it to turn To usward. Further, thou might'st well believe That these film-idols step along with us And set their feet in unison with ours And imitate our carriage, since from that Part of a mirror whence thou hast withdrawn Straightway no ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius

... appearance and conduct was suspicious. Our plans always were to appear to be blockade-runners, so we never carried on our persons any evidence of our true character. We carried forged Confederate documents when we were going where it was desirable. We could imitate General Winder's signature to passes, defying detection, and we had the same kind of paper, a light brown. The ...
— Between the Lines - Secret Service Stories Told Fifty Years After • Henry Bascom Smith

... he saw around him; indeed, he probably copied one of them feature for feature. He has reproduced the severity of expression, the firm mouth, the projecting cheek-bones, the long hair and fan-shaped beard of his model, but he has not been able to imitate the broad and powerful treatment of the older artists; his method of execution has a certain hardness and conventionality which we never see to the same extent in the statues of the XIIth dynasty. The work is, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... however, rests on a circumstance which M. Bergson does not notice, because his psychology is literary and not scientific. It rests on the possibility of imitation. When the organism observed and that of the observer have a similar structure and can imitate one another, the idea produced in the observer by intent contemplation is like the experience present to the person contemplated. But where this contagion of attitude, and therefore of feeling, is impossible, our intuition of our neighbours' souls remains subjective and has no value as ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana

... Have rid the world of monsters numberless; But all are not destroy'd, one you have left Alive—Your son forbids me to say more. Knowing with what respect he still regards you, I should too much distress him if I dared Complete my sentence. I will imitate His reverence, and, to keep silence, ...
— Phaedra • Jean Baptiste Racine

... vigor; how, alone among all the departed statesmen of Virginia, he managed, with the industry and attention of an ordinary citizen, his private affairs, into which he introduced a system which the planter and the merchant might wisely imitate, and which enabled him to compete with his most skilful contemporaries in the success which followed all his exertions; how, unseduced by a love of gold in an age of speculation, he never committed a dollar to the caprices of fortune, or lost an investment; how, though ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby

... as I am glad to notice you are acquiring for the thief. When you are a priest yourself, and in a comparatively short time you will be a priest, I do hope you won't, without his experience, try to imitate Father Rowley too closely in his summary treatment of what I have already I hope made myself quite clear in believing to be in this case a most insufferable young man. Don't misunderstand this letter. I have such great hopes of you in the stormy days to come, and ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie

... Jupiter, he had no living model before his eyes, but having conceived an idea of perfect beauty in his soul, he labored only to imitate it, to produce it in the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various

... inkwell rather than in any imported bottles. It is to Belloc, of course, and to Gilbert Chesterton, that one must go to learn the secret of Kilmer's literary manner. Yet, as Holliday affirms, the similarity is due as much to an affinity of mind with these Englishmen as to any eagerness to imitate. Kilmer was like them in being essentially a humorist. One glance at his face, with its glowing red-brown eyes (the colour of port wine), and the twitching in-drawn corners of the mouth, gave the observer an impression of benignant drollery. Mr. Holliday well says: ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley

... what had been going on, and having innocently attached her name to the paper, is gone from Paris, leaving advice for me to do the same. So here I am, ready to cross into Spain the moment you set out for Paris. Mazarin has taken it into his head to imitate Richelieu: off with the head rather than let the state ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath

... the completion of the hogán, the father sent the young men out again, directing them, as before, not to go to the south. They went off together, and soon espied a herd of deer. The elder brother put on the deer mask and began to imitate the motions of the animal, asking his younger brother what he thought of the mimicry. When the latter gave his approval, the elder brother said, "Steal round to the other side of the herd and when they see you they will come ...
— The Mountain Chant, A Navajo Ceremony • Washington Matthews

... the newly discovered classic marbles upon painting was not so great as is usually supposed. The painters studied them, but did not imitate them. Occasionally in such men as Botticelli and Mantegna we see a following of sculpturesque example—a taking of details and even of whole figures—but the general effect of the antique marbles was to impress ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke

... quarry where you have material in abundance. The arguments that bear the shaping of your own chisel, though not as polished as those you would borrow, will fit more naturally and adorn with greater grace. There are two great risks in reading sermon books—a tendency to imitate the style and a temptation to filch the jewels. The style may be very sublime, but the question is will it suit you. Your neighbour's clothes may fit him admirably, but on you ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan

... did not imitate the Greek form of government, but being of the same Indo-European stock as the people of Hellas, the early history of Rome resembles that of Athens and the other Greek cities. They did not find it difficult ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon

... yellow-brown, with a narrow chestnut wood molding. Then this dull, dark, gray-blue painted woodwork; could any one imagine anything more hideously ugly? It gives me the 'blues' simply to look at it. Could we not have it painted to imitate chestnut wood? And don't you think we might paint the floor around the edges of the rug to imitate the woodwork? Just think of those centre panels of the door painted a contrasting shade of pale pink. The painter who did this work certainly was an artist. A friend of mine in the city, wishing ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas

... our power to imitate far more closely the natural conditions of this problem. We can generate in air artificial skies, and prove their perfect identity with the natural one, as regards the exhibition of a number of wholly unexpected phenomena. It has been recently shown in a great number of instances by myself that ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall

... human nature. Man ought to learn of nature, but not to imitate nature. His work is, through the forms that Nature gives him, to express the idea or feeling that is in him. That is far more likely to produce things in harmony with nature, than the attempt to imitate nature upon the ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald

... boys, but was frank and straight-forward, manly and self-reliant. His nature was a noble one, and had saved him from all mean faults. I hope my young readers will like him as I do, without being blind to his faults. Perhaps, although he was only a boot-black, they may find something in him to imitate. ...
— Ragged Dick - Or, Street Life in New York with the Boot-Blacks • Horatio Alger

... around a dangerous rock-breast, testing crumbly spurs before risking his weight, always going up, up, no hesitation, no pause—that was Muir! My task was the lighter one; he did the head-work, I had but to imitate. The thin fragment of projecting slate that stood the weight of his one hundred and fifty pounds would surely sustain my hundred and thirty. As far as possible I did as he did, took his hand-holds, ...
— Alaska Days with John Muir • Samual Hall Young

... wilfully? Nay, nay, I thought it never truely. For I will preach and beg in sundry lands; I will not do no labour with mine hands, Nor make baskets for to live thereby, Because I will not beggen idlely. I will none of the apostles counterfeit;* *imitate (in poverty) I will have money, wool, and cheese, and wheat, All* were it given of the poorest page, *even if Or of the pooreste widow in a village: All should her children sterve* for famine. *die ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... low-voiced that you have to bend to hear him) that the birds hear something in the morning that we don't get. He says there is a big harmony over the earth at sunrise, and that the birds catch the music of it, and that songs are their efforts to imitate it. An afternoon was not badly spent in discussing this. We recall the fact that it isn't the human ear-drum exactly which will get this—if it ever comes to us—and that Beethoven was stone-deaf when he heard his last symphonies, the great pastoral and dance and choral pieces, ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort

... straw bonnets of Italian braid, Genoese, Leghorn, and others, were brought here, they were too costly for many to purchase; and many attempts, especially by country-bred girls, were made to plait at home straw braids to imitate these envied bonnets. Many towns claim the first American straw bonnet; in fact, the attempts were almost simultaneous. To Betsey Metcalf of Providence, Rhode Island, is usually accorded the honor of starting the straw-hat business in America. The earliest ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle

... put into his hands the works of great poets, which he reads at school; in these are contained many admonitions, and many tales, and praises, and encomia of ancient famous men, which he is required to learn by heart, in order that he may imitate or emulate them and desire to become like them. Then again the teachers of the lyre take similar care that their young disciple is temperate and gets into no mischief; and when they have taught him the ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson

... advanced, quite alone, and performed all his best tricks. He then gave way to the bearer of the pasty. This having been gravely accepted, after the manner of a feudal homage, by the lieutenant-general, the bearer, passing it on to the servants of the Bailliage, proceeded himself to imitate as exactly and as skilfully as possible all the performances of his predecessor the learned dog, amid the shouting and ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... ancient Masters, as by the Kings reader of The lecture of the art of Nauigation, with the time that they be enioyned to bee his auditors, and some part of the questions that they are to answere vnto. Which if they finde good and beneficial for our seamen, I hope they wil gladly imbrace and imitate, or finding out some fitter course of their owne, will seeke to bring such as are of that calling vnto better gouernment and more perfection in that most laudable and needfull vocation. To leaue this point, I was once minded to haue added to the end of these my labours a ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt

... virtues of social life, with the firm unbending qualities of the noble Romans, his ancestors, from whom he was proud to trace his descent. Their merit, indeed, continually dwelt on his tongue, and their actions he was always endeavouring to imitate, as far as was consistent with the character of his times, and with the limited sphere in which he moved. The recollection of his virtue elevates my mind, and fills my heart with a noble pride, which even the cold walls of a monastery have not been ...
— A Sicilian Romance • Ann Radcliffe

... this would not suit her impatience, and she ran up to Margaret's room. There she found a great display of ivy leaves, which Norman, who had been turning half the shops in the town upside down in search of materials, was instructing her to imitate in leather-work—a regular mania with him, and apparently ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge

... Chadwell, of psalm-singing notoriety, since dead; would imitate syncope so admirably, as to deceive a whole room full of company—in an instant he would become pale, motionless, and ghastly as death; the action of his heart has even appeared to be diminished: his sham fits, if possible, exceeded his fainting. He was very ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle

... is devoted to imitative movements. At the end of the fifteenth week the child would imitate the movement of protruding the lips, at nine months would cry on hearing other children do so, and at twelve months used to perform in its sleep imitative movements which had made a strong impression while awake—e.g., blowing; this shows that dreaming occurs at least as early ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various

... many days in thick weather and on an unknown sea, he naturally avails himself of the first pause in the storm—the earliest glance of the sun—to take his latitude, and ascertain how far the elements have driven him from his true course. Let us imitate this prudence before we float farther, that we may at least be able to ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... house—Guise, Conde, Nevers, and Vendome, etc.—had pages chosen among the sons of the best families,—a last lingering custom of departed chivalry. The wealth of the Duc d'Herouville, and the antiquity of his Norman race indicated by his name ("herus villoe"), permitted him to imitate the magnificence of families who were in other respects his inferiors,—those, for instance, of Epernon, Luynes, Balagny, d'O, Zamet, regarded as parvenus, but living, nevertheless, as princes. It was therefore an imposing spectacle for poor Etienne to see the assemblage of retainers ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac

... the furniture of the Georgian period, or of Louis Quinze, or even of the ancient Greeks, such suggestions as will help us to live this twentieth-century life more comfortably and agreeably, we may with good conscience borrow or imitate. ...
— The Complete Home • Various

... "you told me that you had not yet succeeded in persuading him to imitate you in steadfastness ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... organist's watch, which was wrong, two minutes exactly—and then another verse began. My father, being the patron of the living, was careful to sing and pray and listen to the sermon with exemplary attention, aware that every eye in the little church was on our pew, and at first I tried to imitate him; but the behaviour of my legs became so alarming that after vainly casting imploring glances at him and seeing that he continued his singing unmoved, I put out my ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp

... your father; and my life and necessity, not delight or revenge, hath made me insert some passages which will reflect on their owners, as the praises of others will be but just, which is my intent in this narrative. I would not have you be a stranger to it; because, by the example, you may imitate what is applicable to your condition in the world, and endeavour to avoid those misfortunes we have passed through, if ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe

... with cakes and fruit, and during this short repast he exhorted his nephew to leave off bad company, and to seek that of wise and prudent men, to improve by their conversation; "for," said he, "you will soon be at man's estate, and you cannot too early begin to imitate their example." When they had eaten as much as they liked, they got up, and pursued their walk through gardens separated from one another only by small ditches, which marked out the limits without interrupting the communication; so great was the confidence ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various

... the north, were just sufficient, on his arrival, to bespeak the good-will of the family, and recommend himself to their hospitality; but his vocabulary was soon increased—he became a great mimic—he could imitate the cries of every domestic animal—the voices of the servants: he could laugh, whistle, and scold, like any other biped around him. He was, in short, a match even for Kelly's renowned parrot: for although he could not, or would not, sing 'God ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various

... blotted out these races will perhaps always remain an unanswered question. But while Greece was clothing herself with a mantle of beauty, which the world for two thousand years has striven in vain to imitate, there was lying off the North and West coasts of the European Continent a group of mist-enshrouded islands of which ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele

... could be more unwise than any attempt to restore the methods of the Breviary, with its complicated and artificial forms of devotion; but so far to imitate the Breviary as to provide within limits for a recognition of man's innate love of change would be wisdom. By having a distinctive service for week-days, and a distinctive service for holydays, Ave might add just that little increment to the Church's power ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington

... but it is not a question of familiarity or favoritism. All praise to the mocker and the thrasher! May their tribe increase! But if we are to indulge in comparisons, give me the wood thrush, the hermit, and the veery; with tones that the mocking-bird can never imitate, and a simplicity which the Fates—the wise Fates, who will have variety—have put forever beyond his appreciation ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey

... lineaments and swarthy hues, surrounded and displeased her. She took a strange and thrilling pleasure in creeping to his side, and looking up, when unobserved, at the countenance which, in his absence, she loved to imitate with her pencil by day; and to recall in her dreams at night. But she seldom spoke to him, and she shrank, covered with painful blushes, from his arms, whenever he attempted to bestow on her those caresses ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... one of those rare cases of ministers dying in office. Imitate him, my dear minister,—to ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie

... disguised by liquor or to use a softer phrase, had taken too much wine. But others had done the same and treated it as a merry escapade, and why should she be so particular? Belle Gordon would have acted very differently but then she was not Belle, and in this instance she did not wish to imitate her. Belle was so odd, and had become very unpopular, and besides she wished to be very very pleasant to Mr. Romaine. He was handsome, agreeable and wealthy, and she found it more congenial to her ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

... back-muscles under his spines, and tucked himself in, to meet any coming shock, more tightly than ever. Followed the pause a short warning hiss, jerked out almost in fright, it seemed—that cat's hiss that is only a bluff, and meant to imitate a snake—a sudden explosion of snarls, and a thud. A fractional silence, then a perfect boil-over of snarls, and ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars

... dwarf-donkeys, horses, racers, little Elba ponies, jackdaws, bantams, doves of India, and other creatures of this kind, as many as he could lay his hands on. Over and above these beasts, he had a raven, which had learned so well from him to talk, that it could imitate its master's voice, especially in answering the door when some one knocked, and this it did so cleverly that people took it for Giovannantonio himself, as all the folk of Siena know quite well. In like manner, his other pets were so much at home with him that they never left his ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds

... those which had attended the death of Madame de Beaufort at Easter, that I have several times dwelt on the strange coincidence, and striven to find the connecting link. But I never hit on it; and the King's death, and that unexplained tendency to imitate great crimes under which the vulgar labour, prevailed with me to keep the matter secret. Nay, as I believed that d'Evora had played the part of an unconscious tool, and as a hint pressed home sufficed to procure the withdrawal of the chaplain whom Maignan had named, I did not think ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman

... automatic mimicry is evidently allied with that less automatic mimicry which shows itself in greater persistence of customs. For customs adopted by each generation from the last without thought or inquiry, imply a tendency to imitate which overmasters critical and sceptical tendencies: so maintaining habits for which no reasons can be given. The decrease of this irrational mimicry, strongest in the lowest savage and feeblest in ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer

... the reformation in religion had gone a reformation in art. The old conventionalised art of Egypt was cast aside, and an attempt was made to imitate nature, exactly, even to the verge of caricature. The wall and floor paintings that have been discovered at Tel el-Amarna are marvels of realistic art. Plants and animals and birds are alike represented in them with ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce

... noble life. I am greatly indebted to many friends, authors, and newspapers, for extracts and incidents, etc., etc.; and to them I beg to offer my best thanks and humble apology. This book is issued in the hope, that, with all its imperfections, it may inspire the young men of our times to imitate the Christ-like spirit and example of our illustrious and ...
— General Gordon - Saint and Soldier • J. Wardle

... marked A.R. are Numbred on there heads from No. 1 to 50, and are made wines to Imitate those of Madera's, and are in Cask of the Same Largeness and Fabrick and I asshure you of a good Quality. The 30 pipes marked V.P. are on the Lies;[12] they are the wines we Call heare Vidono,[13] there pipes larger then those of the Maderas. ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various

... initiated, at a very early age, into all the practices, good or bad, of their fathers; so that you find a boy or girl, nine or ten years old, able to perform all the motions, and to imitate the frightful gestures, by which the more aged use to inspire their enemies with terror, keeping the strictest time in their song. They likewise sing, with some degree of melody, the traditions of their forefathers, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr

... in advance in case I should die during the work. He who knows my position will again think me very extravagant in the face of this luxurious edition; let it be so; the world, properly so called, is so stingy towards me, that I do not care to imitate it. Therefore, with a kind of anxious pleasure, I have secretly (in order not to be prevented by prudent counsel) prepared this edition the particular tendency of which you will find stated in an introductory notice. Only a few copies have been ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)

... worse books than they are, even for Sunday, that's a fact, though you ought to have better; but which of them do you and Dabney Kinzer mean to imitate to-morrow?" ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various

... without the nest," I cried to Fortune; "and we will take wing to some trackless forest where there are shelter and berries for nestless birds. We will imitate that delightful bride and bridegroom of Parisian Bohemia, who married and settled in an attic, and when their stock of fuel was gone fell foul of the staircase that led to their bower, and so supplied themselves merrily enough till the ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon

... strengthens the sac, enabling it to resist the blood-pressure and so prevent rupture, but, if it increases sufficiently to fill the cavity, may bring about cure. The principle upon which all methods of treatment are based is to imitate nature in producing such ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles

... which loves to see lusty Youth cock its hat when most nervous, swagger with merry insolence to hide the uncertainty which comes of self-conscious inexperience, assume a cynical shrewdness to protect its credulity, and imitate the abandon of the hard fellow who has been to Hong Kong, Tal Tal, and Delagoa Bay. We enjoy seeing Youth act thus; but one learns in time that a visit to Rhodesia, worse luck, makes one no more intelligent than a week-end at Brighton. Well, it ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson

... work out, in their briefest form, as models for the Reader to imitate in working examples, the above four concrete Problems. pg064 (1) [see ...
— Symbolic Logic • Lewis Carroll

... going to imitate Hannibal at Capua, and at ten o'clock next morning gave the signal for starting. The leathern bottles were filled with water, and the day's march commenced. The horses were so well rested that they were quite fresh again, and ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne

... different from that, say, of the varying national modes of pictorial representation. A Japanese picture of a hill both differs from and resembles a typical modern European painting of the same kind of hill. Both are suggested by and both "imitate" the same natural feature. Neither the one nor the other is the same thing as, or, in any intelligible sense, a direct outgrowth of, this natural feature. The two modes of representation are not identical because ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir

... over hand and call to Phil to see if he is in that room. If he is, we'll have him out as soon as you could say Jack Robinson. Miss Ruth, I'm going to ask you to stand guard for us, and if danger approaches, give us some sort of a signal. I suppose you can imitate ...
— The Ranger Boys and the Border Smugglers • Claude A. Labelle

... an Italian, from Milan, Sir Robert said, who had commenced in the South of Ireland, some years before, with one stage-car: his cars now travel three thousand miles a-day: he received no Government aid. "Let me entreat you," urged the amiable ex-Premier, "to imitate that example." ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke

... voting on some question of education or local taxation takes place in a district, these committees of the National Lifeboat Association do not, as such, take part in the deliberations—a modesty, which unfortunately the members of elected bodies do not imitate. But, on the other hand, these brave men do not allow those who have never faced a storm to legislate for them about saving life. At the first signal of distress they rush to their boats, and go ahead. There are no embroidered ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin

... graceful and amusing way of giving a present is not really Eliza's own invention. I did it some years ago when I gave her a pincushion. As the pincushion was made to imitate a poached egg (and really very like), perhaps the humour in that instance had rather more point. However, I do not say this at all to find fault with Eliza. I am rather one to think of novelties, and if Eliza cares to copy any of them, so ...
— Eliza • Barry Pain

... and well-intentioned effort by insurrection to emancipate the slaves of Virginia," but even he added, "Let no one who glories in the Revolutionary struggle of 1776 deny the right of the slaves to imitate the example of ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz

... attired in our best, we walked along the streets hand in hand; my father led me before the cathedral monuments, talking in a low tone of British victories, and commending the heroes to my undivided attention. I understood very early that it was my duty to imitate them. While we remained in the cathedral he talked of glory and Old England, and dropped his voice in the middle of a murmured chant to introduce Nelson's name or some other great man's and this ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... what flour was; only one boy had previously smoked, and the goods were too mysterious to be tested. Many tried to eat flour direct from the bag. The individual who had acquired the reputation of a smoker made himself so sick that none other had the courage to imitate him, and the tobacco and goods were thrown about playfully. In after years the inhabitants were fond of relating how ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... often she hath gossipt by my side; And sat with me on Neptune's yellow sands. Marking th' embarked traders of the flood, When we have laught to see the sails conceive, And grow big-bellied with the wanton wind; Which she, with pretty and with swimming gait, Would imitate, and sail upon the land, To fetch me trifles, and return again As from a voyage rich with merchandize; But she being mortal of that boy did die, And for her sake I do rear up her boy, And for her sake I ...
— A Fairy Tale in Two Acts Taken from Shakespeare (1763) • William Shakespeare

... the immense labors of Caesar in the investment of Alise may excite our admiration, it is not probable that any general in our times will imitate his example. Nevertheless, it is very necessary for the investing force to strengthen its position by detached works commanding the routes by which the garrison might issue or by which the siege might be disturbed from ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini

... wrote to Father La Combe, desiring him to come to me, as I was so extremely ill. Hearing of my condition he was so touched with compassion as to walk on foot all night. He traveled not otherwise, endeavoring in that, as in everything else, to imitate our ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon

... watched all these performances with open mouth. Secretly the fat boy aspired to imitate Davy in some of his antics; though Giraffe always scoffed loudly at the absurd idea of a heavy weight like Bumpus trying to play the ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter

... silence in regard to what chiefly occupied her conscience, was added a new trouble. As Gabriel grew older, a restless, adventurous spirit began to manifest itself in him. From a distance regarding the daring feats of other children, his impulse was to follow and imitate them. At times, in ungovernable outbreaks of merriment, he would escape from the side of Clarice, with fleet, daring steps which seemed to set her pleasure at defiance; and when, after his first exploit, which filled her with astonishment, she prepared to join him in his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various

... justice to missionary enterprise. He must have hailed what Mrs. Browning calls "the deathless singing" which in 1785, in The Task, opened a new era in English literature. He may have been fired with the desire to imitate Whitefield, in the description of whom, though reluctant to name him, ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith

... room on the second floor were furnished with bay windows decorated with some meaningless sort of millwork. The front door stood at the right of the parlour windows. Two Corinthian pillars on either side of the vestibule supported a balcony; these pillars had iron capitals which were painted to imitate the wood of the house, which in its turn was painted to imitate stone. The house was but two stories high, and the roof was topped with an iron cresting. There was a microscopical front yard in which ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris

... paraphrases thus: "Der Gedanke an Dich, liebe Schwester, muss mich zuweilen aufrecht halten, wenn die grosse Masse mit ihrem dummen Hass und ihrer ekelhaften Liebe mich niederdrueckt."[267] There can be no doubt that Heine for a time studied diligently to imitate this fashionable model, pose, irony and all. So diligently perhaps, that he himself was sometimes unable to distinglish between imitation and reality. So at least it would appear from No. 44 of ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun

... Jollity. Braid your Locks with rosie Twine Dropping odours, dropping Wine. Rigor now is gon to bed, And Advice with scrupulous head, Strict Age, and sowre Severity, With their grave Saws in slumber ly. We that are of purer fire Imitate the Starry Quire, Who in their nightly watchfull Sphears, Lead in swift round the Months and Years. The Sounds, and Seas with all their finny drove Now to the Moon in wavering Morrice move, And on the Tawny Sands and Shelves, Trip the pert Fairies and the dapper Elves; By dimpled ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... thinking how dismally it sounded, when, suddenly, in the distance rang out the clear notes of a robin. Tom involuntarily reined in his horse at that; for the call of that bird his Indian friend Long Hair used to imitate for a signal, and had taught Tom how to ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson

... would be imagined must have fallen to his share amongst an oppressed and rebellious people. Indeed, not only did the Irish under his authority seem, for a time, resigned to English rule, but they even showed a passing desire to imitate their fashions; for, 'in conformity to the English Custome, many Irish began to cut their mantles ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote

... the youth, in the tones of a thoroughbred seaman. Not that Willie had ever been at sea, but he was so fond of seamen, and had mingled with them so much at the docks, as well as those of them who had become firemen, that he tried to imitate their gait ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne

... walls. Men whom yourselves with vote and purse sustain, At posts of honor, influence, and gain; The right of Slavery to your sons to teach, And 'South-side' Gospels in your pulpits preach, Transfix the Law to ancient freedom dear On the sharp point of her subverted spear, And imitate upon her cushion plump The mad Missourian lynching from his stump; Or, in your name, upon the Senate's floor Yield up to Slavery all it asks, and more; And, ere your dull eyes open to the cheat, Sell your old homestead underneath your feet While such as these your ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... with his friend, partly because he was by nature a parasite, and partly because it was the fashion among the dissolute young Romans to affect a little contempt for the very birth which, in reality, made them so arrogant; it was the mode to imitate the Greeks, and yet to laugh at their ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

... damsel known in her own circles as the "gold-tooth girl." The latter had, in her earlier days, drifted northward, where she had learned many things, among these the fact that the white race is exceedingly difficult to imitate, desirable though such imitation may seem. The mistress of Sally chanced to be the possessor of a gold-crowned tooth, and nothing would do Sally herself except the same ornament. Having persuaded a dentist to sacrifice one of her splendid bits ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough

... paint him out. The mortal man by nature's rule is bound That child to favour more than all the rest, Which to himself in face is likest found; So that he shall with all his goods be blest: Even so do I esteem and like him best, Which doth most near my dealings imitate, And doth pursue God's laws with deadly hate. As therefore I, when once in angel's state I was, did think myself with God as mate to be, So doth my son himself now elevate Above man's nature in rule and dignity. So that in terris Deus sum, saith ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley

... favor of circumstances to restrain those propensities within due limits, the prosperity of the United States would be exclusively attributable to physical causes, and it would afford no encouragement to a people inclined to imitate their example, without sharing their natural advantages. But neither of these suppositions is borne ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al

... increased to eighty-one. Everything was prosperous, and the members of the association were not only benefitted themselves, but their improvement exercised a beneficent influence upon the people in their neighbourhood. It was hoped that other landlords would imitate the excellent example of Mr. Vandeleur, especially as his experiment was one profitable to himself, as well as calculated to produce peace and contentment in disturbed Ireland. Just when these hopes were raised to their highest degree of ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth

... thing that struck me. She stood back against the wall underneath the shining frames, looking about her with a nervous, timid smile. Her hair was piled up on top of her head in the old way that she used to do when she was trying to imitate Vera, and I don't know why but that seemed to me a good omen, as though she were already on her way back to us. She was wearing a very ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole

... brother," lady Feng remarked smiling, "you are a respectable person, and like a girl in your ways, and shouldn't imitate those monkeys on horseback! do get down and let both you and I sit together in this carriage; and won't that ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin



Words linked to "Imitate" :   take after, mock, mimic, ape, pattern, imitator, mime, resemble, imitation, follow, re-create, imitative, take off, follow suit, reproduce, model, conform to, emulate



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