Mirrored

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. Reflected exactly in a surface such as glass or water ; precisely duplicated or reproduced to match an original
2. Shown as an image reversed or reflected by a smooth surface ; copied with perfect fidelity to create an identical counterpart
3. Presented as a symmetrical or reversed image formed by reflection ; imitated exactly to produce a duplicate or counterpart

Etymology: "Mirrored" is the past tense and past participle of "mirror" used as a verb, so its history is really the history of "mirror" plus a grammatical ending. The ending is the old Germanic past-tense suffix, which traces back through Old English "-ed" and Proto-Germanic "-ōdaz" to very ancient roots, so the verb form is simply the noun "mirror" put into the past tense. The noun "mirror" is the more striking part of the story. It came into English from Old French "mirour," which descended from Latin "mirare," meaning "to wonder at" or "to look at." The Latin verb is the source of the English words "admire" and "miracle," so a mirror was once understood as something to gaze upon with wonder. Over time the sense of looking at something turned into the sense of the surface that does the showing, and the verb "to mirror" later followed from that object.

Synonyms: reflected, echoed