1
as in imitation
using or marked by the use of something else as a basis or model
your writing style tends to be imitative of whichever author you've recently read
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2
as in synthetic
being such in appearance only and made with or manufactured from usually cheaper materials
an imitative extract never has the flavor of the real thing
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Recent Examples of imitative
It may be borrowed or coined, named after a person, inspired by a place or imitative of a sound.
—
Literary Hub, 20 Oct. 2025
Conversations in dorm rooms and lecture halls consist of roughly 97% university-loathing and imitative protests to fire coaches and athletic directors.
—Noah White, Miami Herald, 30 Sep. 2025
Third-party imitative learning from an immigrating parrot’s flockmates may facilitate overall group integration and social bonding and may even give rise to cultural conventions of coordinated movements or gestures.
—Grrlscientist, Forbes.com, 13 Sep. 2025
In Roeck’s picture, competitive, rather than imitative, habits of mind rose from religious warfare, establishing a cutthroat system of cultural and economic innovation which lasts to this day.
—Adam Gopnik, New Yorker, 28 July 2025
See All Example Sentences for imitative
Literary Hub, 20 Oct. 2025
Conversations in dorm rooms and lecture halls consist of roughly 97% university-loathing and imitative protests to fire coaches and athletic directors.
—Noah White, Miami Herald, 30 Sep. 2025
Third-party imitative learning from an immigrating parrot’s flockmates may facilitate overall group integration and social bonding and may even give rise to cultural conventions of coordinated movements or gestures.
—Grrlscientist, Forbes.com, 13 Sep. 2025
In Roeck’s picture, competitive, rather than imitative, habits of mind rose from religious warfare, establishing a cutthroat system of cultural and economic innovation which lasts to this day.
—Adam Gopnik, New Yorker, 28 July 2025
See All Example Sentences for imitative
Recent Examples of Synonyms for imitative
Adjective
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Earlier this year, Target was one of the first national retailers to raise the wellness bar by banning all cereals made with synthetic dyes and colors from its shelves.—
Pamela N. Danziger,
Forbes.com,
18 May 2026
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Target will also carry a Froot Loops Wild Berry cereal made without certified synthetic colors.—
Michele Laufik,
Martha Stewart,
18 May 2026
Adjective
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It’s supposed to be mimetic of speech.—
Andrew Marantz,
New Yorker,
5 Apr. 2026
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One of the most delightful examples of mimetic architecture along Route 66, this West Hollywood gem does exactly what the structure suggests: serves mouthwatering hot dogs.—
Zoey Goto,
Travel + Leisure,
8 Mar. 2026
Adjective
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Garcia, who wrote and directed the movie, has come up with some crisply clever faux-noir dialogue, and part of the joke is that Joe speaks in his hardboiled pensées while everyone else talks like a normal person.—
Owen Gleiberman,
Variety,
21 May 2026
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Unlike many faux-jean pants that always look a little off, these still have that classic denim look.—
Caroline Hughes,
Travel + Leisure,
20 May 2026
Adjective
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While in space, Ship is expected to deploy 22 dummy Starlink satellites — a large increase from the eight or 10 simulated payloads on previous flights.—
Tariq Malik,
Space.com,
18 May 2026
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Who or what is this simulated girlfriend experience that has seemingly overridden Nikki, and where is the genuine article?—
Guy Lodge,
Variety,
14 May 2026
Adjective
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For years, tech experts like Hinton predicted displacement by AI partly because some radiologists’ tasks are seemingly formulaic and repetitive, such as reading scans and writing reports.—
Marco Quiroz-Gutierrez,
Fortune,
4 May 2026
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The other side sees it as an existential threat that could eliminate countless jobs, suck the heart and soul out of film production, and generate dull, formulaic content that will continue to drive audiences away from theaters.—
Andy Greene,
Rolling Stone,
29 Apr. 2026
Adjective
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The jeers were not heard at home thanks to the sound-selecting tech that replaces the boos with artificial cheers.—
Steven Zeitchik,
HollywoodReporter,
16 May 2026
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Rescuing utopian idyll from dystopian reality, Koreeda determines that humanity is too fragile to forfeit its defining qualities to a mechanical species; that our only viable function in an artificial tomorrow is as the eternal caretakers of memory and imagination.—
David Ehrlich,
IndieWire,
16 May 2026
Adjective
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Strangers are matched by experts and move in together after mock wedding ceremonies.—
ABC News,
ABC News,
19 May 2026
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The first mock drafts tend to go up just after the previous year’s real draft ends.—
Dan Greene,
New Yorker,
18 May 2026
Adjective
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The bot-detection firm Cyabra analyzed seven days of activity around the ad and determined that 15 percent of the TikTok accounts commenting on it were fake but had created a disproportionately large percentage of the uproar.—
Lane Brown,
Vulture,
15 May 2026
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To return the favor, Graham proposes a fake dating scheme with Wells to make her crush, singer Justin Kohl (Josh Heuston), jealous.—
Nasha Smith,
PEOPLE,
15 May 2026
Video
A Look at Uncommon Onomatopoeia
Some imitative words are more surprising than others
Cite this Entry
“Imitative.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/imitative. Accessed 22 May. 2026.
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