simulacrum

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English

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WOTD – 25 February 2024

Etymology

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Learned borrowing from Latin simulācrum (“image, likeness”), from simulāre[1] -crum (a variant of -culum, from Proto-Indo-European *-tlom, a suffix forming instrument nouns). Simulāre is the present active infinitive of simulō (“to represent, simulate”) from similis (“similar (to)”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *sem- (“one; together”).

The plural form simulacra is a learned borrowing from Latin simulācra.

Pronunciation

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Noun

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simulacrum (plural simulacra or simulacrums)

  1. A physical image or representation of a deity, person, or thing.
    a simulacrum of a New York studio apartment
    • 1833, [Edward Bulwer-Lytton], “The Visionary and His Daughter—An Englishman, such as Foreigners Imagine the English”, in Godolphin. […], volume II, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, book III, page 18:
      [H]e crossed the haunted Almo, renowned of yore for its healing virtues, and whose stream the far-famed simulacrum, the image of Cybele,) which fell from heaven, was wont to be laved with every coming spring; […]
    • 1856, John Ruskin, “The Mountain Gloom”, in Modern Painters […], volume IV, London: Smith, Elder and Co., […], →OCLC, part V (Of Mountain Beauty), § 6, page 329:
      Is it not strange to reflect, […] that nightly we lay down our gold, to fashion forth simulacra of peasants, in gay ribands and white bodices, singing sweet songs, and bowing gracefully to the picturesque crosses: and all the while the veritable peasants are kneeling, songlessly, to veritable crosses, in another temper than the kind and fair audiences deem of, and assuredly with another kind of answer than is got out of the opera catastrophe; […] If all the gold that has gone to paint the simulacra of the cottages, and to put new songs in the mouths of the simulacra of the peasants, had gone to brighten the existent cottages, and to put new songs in the mouths of the existent peasants, it might in the end, perhaps, have turned out better so, not only for the peasant, but for even the audience.
  2. A thing which has the appearance or form of another thing, but not its true qualities; a thing which simulates another thing; an imitation, a semblance.
    Synonyms: simulant, simulation
    • 1840 May 19, Thomas Carlyle, “Lecture V. The Hero as Man of Letters. Johnson, Rousseau, Burns.”, in On Heroes, Hero-Worship and The Heroic in History, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1840, →OCLC, page 163:
      One Life; a little gleam of Time between two Eternities; no second chance to us forevermore! It were well for us to live not as fools and simulacra, but as wise and realities.
    • 1858, Thomas Carlyle, “Journey Homewards from the Reich; Catastrophe on Journey Homewards”, in History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Called Frederick the Great, volume II, London: Chapman and Hall, […], →OCLC, book VII, page 233:
      He is become a mere enchanted simulacrum of a Duke; bewitched under worse than Thessalian spells; without faculty of willing, except as she wills; his People and he the plaything of this Circe or Hecate, that has got hold of him.
    • 1861 November, W[illiam] M[akepeace] Thackeray, “George the Fourth”, in The Four Georges: Sketches of Manners, Morals, Court, and Town Life, London: Smith, Elder and Co., […], →OCLC, page 169:
      [Y]ou find you have nothing—nothing but a coat and wig and a mask smiling below it—nothing but a great simulacrum.
    • 1877, William Black, “Culture”, in Green Pastures and Piccadilly. […], volume III, London: Macmillan and Co., →OCLC, page 86:
      Certainly a vehicle that seemed to have no inside at all—that appeared to be the mere simulacrum of a vehicle—could not very well contain the two.
    • 2008 October 23, Manohla Dargis, “Movie review: ‘Synecdoche, New York’: Dreamer, live in the here and now”, in The New York Times‎[1], New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2023-04-29:
      Inside the warehouse, he builds a replica of his world line by line, actor by actor, until fiction and nonfiction blur. Like the full-scale map in [Jose Luis] Borges's short story "On Exactitude in Science," the representation takes on the dimensions of reality to the point of replacing it. The French theorist Jean Baudrillard uses Borges's story as a metaphor for his notion of the simulacrum, which probably explains why Caden, who has trouble naming things, considers titling his production "Simulacrum."
    • 2018, Ling Ma, chapter 1, in Severance, New York, N.Y.: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, →ISBN, page 13:
      The future just wants more consumers. The future is more newly arrived college grads and tourists in some fruitless search for authenticity. The future is more overpriced Pabsts at dive-bar simulacrums.
    • 2018 September 18, Amanda Kolson Hurley, CityLab, “Fake Public Squares Are Coming to the Suburbs: ‘Memory Towns’ Promise to Provide an Aging Population with Dementia Therapy and the Accessible Spaces of a Bygone Era”, in The Atlantic‎[2], Washington, D.C.: The Atlantic Monthly Group, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2023-01-09:
      It's a sad commentary on our real, full-scale communities that they are so anti-urban by comparison, and so unsafe for the old and frail. […] We shouldn't have to dodge traffic on an eight-lane road just to get to a simulacrum of an inclusive urban place. The problem is not too much Disneyland thinking—it's not enough.

Descendants

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  • → Polish: symulakrum

Translations

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See also

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References

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  1. ^ “simulacrum, n.”, in OED Online Paid subscription required⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, December 2023; “simulacrum, n.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.

Further reading

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Latin

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Etymology

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From simulā(re) ‎ -crum (a variant of -culum, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *-tlom, a suffix forming instrument nouns).

Pronunciation

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Noun

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simulācrum n (genitive simulācrī); second declension

  1. image, likeness, statue, effigy, portrait
    Synonyms: effigiēs, imāgō, statua
    • 29 BCE – 19 BCE, Virgil, Aeneid 2.232–233:
      “Dūcendum ad sēdēs simulācrum ōrandaque dīvae / nūmina conclāmant.”
      “[The Trojans] cried out: ‘The effigy [of the horse] must be taken to the temple of the goddess, and [we] must entreat her divine favor.’”
    • Maurus Servius Honoratus, In Vergilii Bucolica commentarii :
      Aliī dīcunt Orestem, cum Diānae Facelītidis simulācrum raptum ex Scythiā adveheret et ad Siciliam esset tempestāte dēlātus, complētō annō Diānae fēstum celebrāsse hymnīs, collēctīs nautīs suīs et aliquibus pāstōribus convocātīs, et exinde permānsisse apud rūsticōs cōnsuētūdinem.
      Others say that Orestes, when he was taking the figure of Taurian Diana from Scythia and was carried off to Sicily by a storm, he venerated her an entire year with hymns, with his sailors collected and some shepherds summoned, and that from there did the custom remain among the country-dwellers.
  2. specter, ghost, phantom; mimicry, imitation

Declension

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Second-declension noun (neuter).

singular plural
nominative simulācrum simulācra
genitive simulācrī simulācrōrum
dative simulācrō simulācrīs
accusative simulācrum simulācra
ablative simulācrō simulācrīs
vocative simulācrum simulācra

Descendants

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References

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  • “simulacrum”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  • “simulacrum”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
  • simulacrum in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)
  • simulacrum in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
  • Carl Meißner, Henry William Auden (1894) Latin Phrase-Book‎[3], London: Macmillan and Co.
    • to make a marble statue: simulacrum e marmore facere
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