lookalikeadj.n.
/ˈlʊkəˌlʌɪk/, U.S. /ˈlʊkəˌlaɪk/ Originally North American.
A. adj. (attributive).
1. Designating a person who or thing which closely resembles another in appearance.
ΘΚΠ
the world > relative properties > relationship > similarity > [adjective] > closely resembling
emulous1398
close1719
near-resembling1739
lookalike1904
1904 St. Louis (Missouri) Post-Disp. 4 Mar. 1/2 (heading) Girl clings to him. Insists he's her husband and look-alike brother denies he has taken a wife.
1939 Life 3 Apr. 56/2 The hand-modeled ‘look-alike’ dolls sold for $83 each.
1957 Pop. Mech. July 92/1 The homes were miserable boxes strung in drab and lookalike rows.
1974 Publishers Weekly 11 Feb. 62/3 He meets Gabrielle, Simone's look-alike sister, and falls in love all over again.
2002 M. Beard Parthenon i. 5 The city of Edinburgh..was encouraged..to commemorate the Battle of Waterloo with a lookalike Parthenon on Calton Hill.
2. Designating a drug that is intended to mimic the pharmacological properties of another drug without infringing on patents relating to it. Also: designating a drug produced clandestinely as a counterfeit of another (legal or illegal) drug.
ΚΠ
1980 Daily Intelligencer (Doylestown, Pa.) 29 Sept. 24/1 The major brand-name drug companies have succeeded in convincing the senate to pass a ban on look-alike drugs and pushed through a regulation that they can be characterized as ‘counterfeit drugs’.
1982 Chicago Sun-Times 8 Sept. 3/3 Thompson signed legislation to outlaw ‘look-alike’ drugs—pills filled with codeine and other substances and sold illicitly as controlled substances.
1997 Pharmacol. Biochem. & Behaviour 60 771/1 Look-alike amphetamine or pseudospeed, which was deliberately manufactured to resemble amphetamine both in physical appearance and pharmacological effect.
1998 Irish Times 2 Sept. 3/6 Calls for lookalike ecstasy drug to be banned.
2005 Times 15 Apr. 54/3 Ivax, a Miami-based maker of cheap generic lookalike drugs.
B. n.
1.
a. A person who or thing which closely resembles another in appearance; esp. someone who is very similar in appearance to a famous person.Frequently following the name of the person or thing resembled.
ΘΚΠ
the world > relative properties > relationship > similarity > [noun] > that which resembles something else > in appearance or sound
lookalike1935
sound-alike1970
lookie-likie1990
1935 Boston Daily Globe 18 July 16/6 Look alikes..Robert W. Service and Service, Robert W.
1947 Time 1 Dec. 78 Lisle Maxwell Sanders..is often called ‘Mr. Kieran’ for his famed look-alike.
1961 M. Beadle These Ruins are Inhabited (1963) ii. 31 Those look-a-likes, the two-shilling piece and the half-crown.
1969 L. Greenbaum Out of Shape (1970) xxv. 175 Asher was flanked by his pregnant wife and a long-haired student. Except for the wife's stomach, the two women were look-alikes.
1982 Private Eye 2 July 4/3 Purged from his £10,000 a year job is hapless Bob Houston, a clean-shaven, pencil-slim, non-swearing teetotal choirboy lookalike.
2003 TV Quick 29 Nov. (Central Region ed.) 37/3 Peter Sellers..as shop steward Fred Kite, a Hitler lookalike who is ready to call a strike at the drop of a flat cap.
b. A person who professionally imitates a (specified) celebrity.
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1967 Salt Lake Tribune 31 Dec. (Mag.) 13/2 One of the most-rented party-goers in the land at this moment..is not a celebrity—all she happens to be is a celebrity look-alike... She earns fat fees wandering mysteriously among the guests at crowded New York cocktail parties.
1989 Sunday Times (Nexis) 18 June ‘I walk and talk and dress like Marilyn when I am doing a job, but I can switch off again’, says lookalike Carilyn Paton.
2012 J. Lewin Ballgame! v. 96 The Eagle hired a Pope lookalike—the same one used in the movie The Naked Gun.
2. A lookalike drug (see sense A. 2).
ΚΠ
1977 Scottsdale (Arizona) Daily Progress 31 Oct. 19/7 The distribution ring could have been established to market ‘look-alikes’—caffeine purposely manufactured to look like illicit drugs—but now sells ‘the real thing’.
1987 Brit. Med. Jrnl. 23 May 1308/1 Look alikes are the same stimulants packaged closely to resemble amphetamine tablets in size, colour, numbering and trademark, enabling them to be sold on the street as such.
2007 M. Weinberg Careers in Crime 64/1 Their offerings include look-alikes with insufficient or imaginary active ingredients.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, March 2015; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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adj.n.1904