< Anglo-Norman and Old French himage (also imagene, imagine, ymagene, ymagine, etc.: see below), Anglo-Norman and Old French, Middle French image, ymage, imaige, etc. (French image) artificial image or representation (in solid or flat form) of a person or object (late 11th cent. in Old French), illusion (early 12th cent. or earlier in Anglo-Norman), semblance, likeness (12th cent. or earlier in Anglo-Norman), mental representation of a person or object (c1160), reflection in a mirror (c1170), appearance, shape (early 13th cent. or earlier in Anglo-Norman), symbol (c1370), figurative representation of one of the constellations, planets, fixed stars, etc. (c1400) < classical Latin imāgin-, imāgō representation in art of a person or thing, picture, likeness, death mask of an ancestor, reflection in a mirror, reflection of sound, echo, image emitted by an object and apprehended by the eyes, illusory apparition, phantom, hallucination, representation to the imagination, mental picture, description, (in rhetoric) comparison, simile, semblance, imitation, duplicate, copy, model, example, manifestation, personification, visible form, appearance, shape, in post-classical Latin also allegory, symbol (early 3rd cent. in Tertullian) < the same base as imitārī imitate v. + ‑gō, suffix forming nouns.Compare Old Occitan image, esmage (14th cent.; also imagena, emagina), Catalan imatge (12th cent.), Spanish imagen (a1250), Portuguese imagem (13th cent.), Italian immagine (14th cent.; also as image, imagine).

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