Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use imitate in a sentence

40 example sentences · verb

Imitate means to follow as a model or a pattern; to make a copy, counterpart or semblance of. Example: “We don't want to blaze a trail when we can imitate something that has already been done.”

Examples of imitate by meaning

verbTo follow as a model or a pattern; to make a copy, counterpart or semblance of.

  • A wave simulator in the tank can re-enact tsunamis and northeasters, and imitate wave conditions from midocean.2007 February 20, Tina Kelley, “A Wet Wind Tunnel So Ships Can Move Faster and Better”, in The New York Times, archived from the original...
  • “This was designed to imitate a cave,” said Rosas.2019 August 21, Tik Root, “Inside the Race to Build the World's First Commercial Octopus Farm”, in TIME, archived from the original on 28...

More sentences with imitate

  • We don't want to blaze a trail when we can imitate something that has already been done.From the entry blaze a trail
  • The irregular back-and-forth flutter of this fishing lure imitates the movement of an injured or sick fish.From the entry flutter
  • "Bouba" and "Kiki" are sound-symbolic labels, not directly imitating any actual sound but nonetheless carrying strong intrinsic associations with roundness and pointiness, respectively.From the entry sound-symbolic
  • There are three typical forms of ode: Horatian, Pindaric and irregular. Horatian odes follow the conventions of Horace, who deliberately imitated the Greek lyricists such as Alcaeus and Anacreon.From the entry Horatian
  • Soil erosion may sometimes produce defects with smooth edges that may imitate remodeled margins.2023, Simon Mays, “The Macroscopic Study of Human Skeletal Paleopathology” (chapter 2), in The Routledge Handbook of Paleopathology…. From the entry treponemal
  • Others warned the British government’s approach would be imitated, for political expediency, by authorities elsewhere.2021 July 16, Ben Quinn, “England’s Covid unlocking is threat to world, say 1,200 scientists”, in The Guardian. From the entry expediency
  • She's miming a commodified femininity, and comes across as if she's imitating a drag-queen imitating Beyoncé.2013 October 7, Noah Berlatsky, “Of Course Miley Cyrus Is a Sham”, in The Atlantic. From the entry commodified
  • Would you be willing to imitate all the examples of the old church?2008 [1582], Dirck Coornhert, translated by Gerrit Voogt, Synod on the Freedom of Conscience […], →ISBN, page 197. From the entry Ebionize
  • The koha is an early bird, and its call is strident, plaintive, and easy to imitate.2006, Swarna Wickremeratne, “Festival of New Beginnings: The New Year”, in Buddha in Sri Lanka: Remembered Yesterdays, Albany, N.Y.: State…. From the entry koha
  • Bellerophon attempts to become a mythic hero by perfectly imitating the actuarial program for mythic heroes.2005, Gerhard Hoffmann, From modernism to postmodernism: concepts and strategies, page 294. From the entry mythic
  • Mino Iga imitates true Iga ware in shape and is covered with a thin overglaze.2002, Ryōji Kuroda, Takeshi Murayama, Classic Stoneware of Japan: Shino and Oribe, →ISBN, page 44. From the entry Iga ware
  • Order maintenance, I would argue, shares this Durkheimian understanding of social categories as imitating nature.2001, Bernard E. Harcourt, chapter 5, in Illusion of Order. From the entry Durkheimian
  • Israel will imitate the angels by saying the shirah of the angels.2001, Max Kadushin, Worship and Ethics: A Study in Rabbinic Judaism, Global Academic Publishing, →ISBN, page 149. From the entry shirah
  • Thermography, which imitates engraving, costs far less because it employs no dies or plates.1999, Paperie: The Art of Writing and Wrapping with Paper, page 73. From the entry thermography
  • Death, forcing the beloved to imitate the animal's deconstruction, will make her surrender gender, identity, and coherence.1990, Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae. From the entry embryogeny
  • Unfortunately, Toder chooses to imitate this model and her story suffers.1980 December 6, Cindy Rizzo, “Jewish, Lesbian, Feminist, Psychologist, Author--All of the above and more”, in Gay Community News, volume…. From the entry fatal
  • This owl imitated Trumpkin’s voice rather well, and there were sounds of owlish laughter all round.1953, C. S. Lewis, chapter 4, in The Silver Chair, Collins, published 1998. From the entry owlish
  • I hate the movies like poison, but I get a bang imitating them.1951 July 16, J[erome] D[avid] Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown and Company, →OCLC, page 38. From the entry bang
  • An initiated aboriginal man made womanly by sub-incision can imitate the womb's ability to open.1929, Nor Hall, Warren Royal Dawson, Brood Males. From the entry wombly
  • "Say, Song, you see something makee you flaid this moling?" said Stella, imitating Song's pidgin English.1915, Edward C. Taylor, Ted Strong's Motor Car. From the entry makee
  • Eats 'em alive!" Brissenden exclaimed, imitating the spieler of a locally famous snake-eater.1908 September – 1909 September, Jack London, chapter 31, in Martin Eden, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company, published September 1909…. From the entry spieler
  • The Soulsborne formula has been imitated countless times but mastered by few apart from FromSoftware, the original pioneers.2022 December 29, Cameron Rasmusson, “Elden Ring recaptures magic of video game discovery”, in Reader, page 17. From the entry Soulsborne
  • Why would I want to imitate such vile grossitude?2016 October 25, Justin Tyme, “I must be off...”, in alt.baldspot (Usenet). From the entry grossitude
  • This "antimirror neuron" activity, as some researchers call it, appears to deactivate the brain's propensity to imitate another person."2012, Andrew Newberg, Mark Robert Waldman, Words Can Change Your Brain. From the entry antimirror neuron
  • Process technologies, or the routines endemic in the firm's production, are not readily observable, and thus cannot be easily imitated.2008, David J. Teece, Technological Know-how, Organizational Capabilities, and Strategic Management. From the entry observable
  • Troppmann hopes to imitate and share in Dirty's headlessness, as opposed to the unsolar, cerebral rationality of Lazare.2002, Alexander Irwin, Saints of the Impossible, page 98. From the entry unsolar
  • I try to imitate the sound of a dyno torch.2000, Carol Fox, editor, In Times of War: An Anthology of War and Peace in Children's Literature. From the entry dyno torch
  • I got some legos and parallel played, imitating her actions.1999, Deborah Abelman, Peer-mediated Intervention Strategies for Social Competency Skills of Preschoolers with Autism in Integrated…. From the entry parallel play
  • Furthermore, children demonstrated that they understood the mapping by elaborating phrasals to sententials, and reducing sententials to phrasals when imitating.1985, Dan Isaac Slobin, The Crosslinguistic Study of Language Acquisition, page 105. From the entry sentential
  • White entertainers like Eddie Cantor (left) cashed in on the blackenization of White America by imitating Black minstrels in blackface.1980, Louie Robinson, "The Blackening of White America", Ebony, May 1980, page 162 (image caption). From the entry blackenization
  • Otherwise sane, Latahs compulsively imitate every motion once their attention is attracted by snapping the fingers or calling sharply.1962 [1959], William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch, New York: Grove Press. From the entry latah
  • A moosecall is a horn of birch bark used by hunters to imitate the roar and bellow of the bull moose.1948, George W. Stimpson, Information Roundup, page 408. From the entry moosecall
  • Yoritomo met their smiles and kowtowings and noisy insuckings of breath with an austere dignity that I took pains to imitate.1910, Robert Ames Bennet, The Shogun's Daughter. From the entry kowtowing
  • This neglect means that the students acquire knowledge and skills through the media and by observing and imitating others in their immediate environment.2025 May 14, Carmit-Noa Shpigelman, Gal Hodara Hassan, ““The System Sweeps it Under the Rug”: Educational Staff’s Perspectives on Romantic…. From the entry neglect
  • This system is designed to explain the world from observations, as opposed to taking actions in it to imitate or please humans.2025, Yoshua Bengio et al., “Superintelligent Agents Pose Catastrophic Risks: Can Scientist AI Help?”, in arXiv, →DOI. From the entry non-agentic
  • But if the point of living lies in relationships with other people, then it’s hard to think of A.I. assistants that imitate humans without nervousness.2024 May 20, Alissa Wilkinson, “What We Lose When ChatGPT Sounds Like Scarlett Johansson”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, archived from the…. From the entry loneliness
  • She did her makeup heavier than usual, imitating the smoky eyes and bright red lips that came up when she Google-searched “flapper makeup.”2014, Michelle Madow, Diamonds in the Rough, page 186. From the entry smoky eyes
  • The heavily Botoxed, stylishly black-clad, elegantly blinged women who organized this evening may not want to imitate Bette's style, but they certainly love her sass.2009 January 24, Richard Ouzounian, “A winning Bette”, in Toronto Star. From the entry botox

Meaning of imitate

  1. verb To follow as a model or a pattern; to make a copy, counterpart or semblance of.

Full definition of imitate

Questions about imitate in a sentence

How do you use imitate in a sentence?
Imitate is used as a verb. For example: “We don't want to blaze a trail when we can imitate something that has already been done.”
What is a short sentence with imitate?
“Why would I want to imitate such vile grossitude?”
What does imitate mean?
Imitate means to follow as a model or a pattern; to make a copy, counterpart or semblance of.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: imitate (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use imitate in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/imitate. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.