likeness

Etymology

From Middle English liknesse, from Old English līcness, ġelīcnes (“the quality of being like or equal; likeness; image; copy; pattern; example; parable”), from Proto-West Germanic *galīkanassī (“likeness”), equivalent to like + -ness. Cognate with West Frisian likenis (“likeness”), Dutch gelijkenis (“similarity; likeness; parable”), German Low German Glieknis (“form; semblance; likeness; parable”), German Gleichnis (“form; semblance; image; likeness; parable; simile”). The verb is derived from the noun. Compare also Old Norse líkneskja (“figure, image, appearance, likeness”).

noun

1. The state or quality of being like or alike
   Erich thought he observed a likeness between the stranger and a relative of Walther; this led them into the chapter of likenesses, and the strange way in which certain forms repeat themselves in families, often most distinctly in the most remote ramifications. 1822, Ludwig Tieck, translated by Connop Thirlwall, The Pictures
2. Appearance or form; guise.
   A foe in the likeness of a friend
   And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. Genesis, I, 26
3. That which closely resembles; a portrait.
   How he looked, the likenesses of him which still remain enable us to imagine.

verb

1. (archaic, transitive) To depict.
   I have this morning received the photographs of my two boys. The eldest is very well likenessed: the other, perhaps, not so well. 1857, April 25, Alfred Lord Tennyson, letter to Reginald Southey, in Cecil Y. Lang and Edgar F. Shannon Jr. (editors), The Letters of Alfred Lord Tennyson, Volume II: 1851-1870, Belknap Press (1987), page 171
   Every member of the family [of General Grant] is as faithfully likenessed as the photographs, which were given to the artist from the hands of the General himself, have power to express. 1868, November, advertisement, in Arthur's Home Magazine, Volume XXXII, Number 21, after page 320