facsimile

A facsimile is not the original, but a very exact copy of it. You will often see the word used for documents, old books, works of art, or signatures that have been copied so closely that they look almost the same as the real thing. Before email and modern scanning became common, businesses used fax machines to send facsimiles of documents over phone lines. You might also see a facsimile signature on a printed letter; it looks like the person's real handwriting, but it was copied rather than written by hand.

Imagine you come across an ancient scroll, so fragile that even light and air could harm it. A museum may decide not to display the original at all. Instead, it might show a facsimile: a carefully made copy that looks almost exactly like the real scroll. That is the heart of the word "facsimile" - a close and faithful reproduction, often of a document, book, map, signature, or work of art.

Historically, the term also became strongly linked to technology. The "fax machine" is short for "facsimile machine." It sent an image of a document over a phone line so that a matching copy could be printed at the other end. Even though fax machines are less common now, the idea is still familiar. A printed copy of a handwritten signature, a full-size reprint of an old manuscript, or a high-quality reproduction of a painting can all be called a facsimile when the goal is to match the original as closely as possible.

The word can also be used a little more loosely for something that only seems to be the real thing because it is such a close match. In that sense, it still suggests imitation rather than originality. This use is less common than the concrete one, but the idea stays the same: what you are looking at is a near-copy, not the original itself.

So whether you are looking at a museum display, a copied signature, or an old document sent by fax, a facsimile is something made to reproduce the original as exactly as possible without actually being the original.