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Description vs Likeness - What's the difference?

description | likeness | Related terms |

Description is a related term of likeness.


As nouns the difference between description and likeness

is that description is a sketch or account of anything in words; a portraiture or representation in language; an enumeration of the essential qualities of a thing or species while likeness is the state or quality of being like or alike; similitude; resemblance; similarity.

As a verb likeness is

(archaic|transitive) to depict.

description

English

(wikipedia description)

Noun

(en noun)
  • A sketch or account of anything in words; a portraiture or representation in language; an enumeration of the essential qualities of a thing or species.
  • The act of describing; a delineation by marks or signs.
  • A set of characteristics by which someone or something can be recognized.
  • (biology) A scientific documentation of a specimen intended to reveal a new species by technically explaining its characteristics and particularly how it differs from other species.
    • The type description of the fungus was written by a botanist.

    Synonyms

    * (characteristics) sort, kind, type, variety

    Related terms

    * describe * descriptive

    External links

    * *

    See also

    * synopsis * interpretation

    Anagrams

    * ----

    likeness

    English

    Noun

    (es)
  • The state or quality of being like or alike; similitude; resemblance; similarity.
  • Appearance or form; guise.
    • An enemy in the likeness of a friend.
  • * Genesis, I, 26
    • 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.
  • That which closely resembles; a portrait.
    • How he looked, the likenesses of him which still remain enable us to imagine.

    Synonyms

    * similarity

    Related terms

    * like

    See also

    * copy * portrait * analogy

    Verb

    (es)
  • (archaic) To depict.
  • * 1857 , April 25, , in Cecil Y. Lang and Edgar F. Shannon Jr. (editors), The Letters of Alfred Lord Tennyson, Volume II: 1851-1870 , Belknap Press (1987), ISBN 0-674-52583-3, page 171:
    • I have this morning received the photographs of my two boys. The eldest is very well likenessed : the other, perhaps, not so well.
  • * 1868 , November, advertisement, in 's Home Magazine , Volume XXXII, Number 21, after page 320:
    • Every member of the family [of is as faithfully likenessed as the photographs, which were given to the artist from the hands of the General himself, have power to express.