English

Alternative forms

• resemblaunce

Noun

resemblance ‎(plural resemblances)

1. The quality or state of resembling; likeness; similitude; similarity.
   • 1997, Chris Horrocks, Introducing Foucault, page 67, The Renaissance Episteme (Totem Books, Icon Books; ISBN 1840460865)

     Words and things were united in their 'resemblance'. Renaissance man thought in terms of similitudes: the theatre of life, the mirror of nature. There were four ranges of resemblance.
     Aemulation was similitude within distance: the sky resembled a face because it had “eyes” — the sun and moon.
     Convenientia connected things near to one another, e.g. animal and plant, making a great “chain” of being.
     Analogy: a wider range based less on likeness than on similar relations.
     Sympathy likened anything to anything else in universal attraction, e.g. the fate of men to the course of the planets.
     A “signature” was placed on all things by God to indicate their affinities — but it was hidden, hence the search for arcane knowledge. Knowing was guessing and interpreting, not observing or demonstrating.

2. That which resembles, or is similar; a representation; a likeness.
3. A comparison; a simile.
4. Probability; verisimilitude.

Synonyms

• likeness

Translations

Old French

Etymology

resembler +‎ -ance.

Noun

resemblance f ‎(oblique plural resemblances, nominative singular resemblance, nominative plural resemblances)

1. similarity (taken as a whole, the qualities than make two or more things similar)

References

• (fr) Godefroy, Frédéric, Dictionnaire de l'ancienne langue française et de tous ses dialectes du IX^e au XV^e siècle (1881) (resemblance, supplement)
• resemblance on the Anglo-Norman On-Line Hub (has no entry, but lists one citation)