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simulacrum

Representation or imitation of a person or thing

EntityQ1412596

Also known as simulacra · dummy · fake · replica · dummy object · example object

Subclass of: representation
Part of: psychological terminology
, replacing entity

Overview

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia · Read full article · Text CC BY-SA 4.0

A simulacrum is a representation or imitation of a person or thing. The word was first recorded in the English language in the late 16th century, used to describe a representation, such as a statue or a painting, especially of a god. By the late 19th century, it had gathered a secondary association of inferiority: an image without the substance or qualities of the original. Literary critic Fredric Jameson offers photorealism as an example of artistic simulacrum, in which a painting is created by copying a photograph that is itself a copy of the real thing. Other art forms that play with simulacra include trompe-l'œil, pop art, Italian neorealism, and French New Wave.

Overview

All data

25 statements · 8% with external sources · numbers in brackets are citations

Has characteristic: verisimilitude
degeneracy
Does not have characteristic: functionality
Has use: display window
deception
test
example
physical template
Partially coincident with: toy
Said to be the same as: Ersatz good
Facet of: Platonism

On other databases

12 identifiers linking simulacrum across the web's reference databases

Data quality

statements

externally sourced

Source last edited September 20, 2026. AIDB refreshes this page daily.

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AIDB. (2026). simulacrum (Q1412596). Retrieved from https://aidb.si/e/simulacrum-Q1412596