Im"age (?), n. [F., fr. L. imago, imaginis, from the root of imitari to imitate. See Imitate, and cf. Imagine.]
1.
An imitation, representation, or similitude of any person, thing, or act, sculptured, drawn, painted, or otherwise made perceptible to the sight; a visible presentation; a copy; a likeness; an effigy; a picture; a semblance.
Even like a stony image, cold and numb.
Shak.
Whose is this image and superscription?
Matt. xxii. 20.
This play is the image of a murder done in Vienna.
Shak.
And God created man in his own image.
Gen. i. 27.
2.
Hence: The likeness of anything to which worship is paid; an idol.
Chaucer.
Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, . . . thou shalt not bow down thyself to them.
Ex. xx. 4, 5.
3.
Show; appearance; cast.
The face of things a frightful image bears.
Dryden.
4.
A representation of anything to the mind; a picture drawn by the fancy; a conception; an idea.
Can we conceive
Image of aught delightful, soft, or great?
Prior.
5. Rhet.
A picture, example, or illustration, often taken from sensible objects, and used to illustrate a subject; usually, an extended metaphor.
Brande & C.
6. Opt.
The figure or picture of any object formed at the focus of a lens or mirror, by rays of light from the several points of the object symmetrically refracted or reflected to corresponding points in such focus; this may be received on a screen, a photographic plate, or the retina of the eye, and viewed directly by the eye, or with an eyeglass, as in the telescope and microscope; the likeness of an object formed by reflection; as, to see one's image in a mirror.
Electrical image. See under Electrical. -- Image breaker, one who destroys images; an iconoclast. -- Image graver, Image maker, a sculptor. -- Image worship, the worship of images as symbols; iconolatry distinguished from idolatry; the worship of images themselves. -- Image Purkinje Physics, the image of the retinal blood vessels projected in, not merely on, that membrane. -- Virtual image Optics, a point or system of points, on one side of a mirror or lens, which, if it existed, would emit the system of rays which actually exists on the other side of the mirror or lens.
Clerk Maxwell.
© Webster 1913.
Im"age (?), v. t. [imp. & p. p. Imaged (?); p. pr. & vb. n. Imaging (?).]
1.
To represent or form an image of; as, the still lake imaged the shore; the mirror imaged her figure.
"Shrines of
imaged saints."
J. Warton.
2.
To represent to the mental vision; to form a likeness of by the fancy or recollection; to imagine.
Condemn'd whole years in absence to deplore,
And image charms he must behold no more.
Pope.
© Webster 1913.