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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

semblance.

The outward appearance or form of a person or thing.

9 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈsɛmblən(t)s/General-American, Received-Pronunciation
  1. The outward appearance or form of a person or thing.

    countable
  2. The outward appearance or form of a person or thing. Followed by of: the outward appearance of a person or thing when regarded as similar to that of another person or thing.

    countable · uncountable
  3. The outward appearance or form of a person or thing. Followed by of: the outward appearance of a person or thing which is different from what the person or thing actually is; also, an outward appearance of a thing which does not actually exist.

    countable · uncountable
  4. Followed by of: a person or thing that is seen; an apparition, a vision.

    countable
  5. Followed by of: a person or thing that looks similar to another person or thing; a likeness.

    countable
  6. Followed by of: a bare or mere appearance of something.

    countable
  7. A person's non-verbal behaviour or demeanour which shows their feelings, thoughts, etc., or which is faked to hide such true feelings, thoughts, etc.

    countable
  8. In the form make semblance: an act of appearing; an appearance, a manifestation; also, a false appearance, a pretence.

    countable · dated
  9. The quality or state of being similar; likeness, resemblance, similarity.

    archaic · uncountable
  10. The chance of something happening; likelihood, probability.

    obsolete · uncountable
Where this word comes from

From Middle English semblaunce (“outward appearance, form; appearance without reality; condition or fact of being apparent; symbolic image; facial expression, countenance; conduct, manner; image, likeness; analogy, comparison”), from Anglo-Norman semblaunce and Old French semblance (modern French semblance), from semblant, the present participle of sembler (“to appear; to resemble, seem”), from Late Latin similāre, the present active infinitive of similō, a variant of Latin simulō (“to act or behave as if; to imitate, simulate”), from similis (“like resembling, similar to”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *sem- (“one; together”)) + -ō (suffix forming regular first-conjugation verbs). By surface analysis, semble + -ance (suffix forming nouns denoting conditions or states).

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.