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appearance

nouncommon in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//əˈpɪə.ɹəns//
  • United States//əˈpiɹ.əns//

The act of appearing or coming into sight; the act of becoming visible to the eye.

noun

  1. 1

    The act of appearing or coming into sight; the act of becoming visible to the eye.

    His sudden appearance surprised me.

  2. 2

    A thing seen; a phenomenon; an apparition.

    There was a strange appearance in the sky.

  3. 3

    The way something looks; personal presence

    And now am come to ſee of whom ſuch noiſe Hath walk'd about, and each limb to ſurvey, If thy appearance anſwer loud report.

    The most rapid and most seductive transition in all human nature is that which attends the palliation of a ravenous appetite.[…]Can those harmless but refined fellow-diners be the selfish cads whose gluttony and personal appearance so raised your contemptuous wrath on your arrival?

  4. 4

    Apparent likeness; the way which something or someone appears to others.

    Some people say I'm shallow because I care so much about my appearance.

    KAWS’s first sculptures were limited edition toys for the Japanese brand Bounty Hunter, and the stylised figures distributed around YSP in a variety of postures – shielding their eyes from the sun, seated in apparent contemplation or leading a child-sized version of themselves over the sward – have the appearance of gigantic toys, with their instant legibility and machine-honed surfaces.

    And on the day that the tabernacle was reared up the cloud covered the tabernacle, namely, the tent of the testimony: and at even there was upon the tabernacle as it were the appearance of fire, until the morning.

    Judge not according to the appearance.

  5. 5

    That which is not substance, essence, hypostasis; the outward reality as opposed to the underlying reality

    Catholicism teaches that the Eucharist, while remaining under the physical appearance of bread and wine, becomes really and truly the body and the blood of Christ.

  6. 6

    The act of appearing in a particular place, or in society, a company, or any proceedings; a coming before the public in a particular character.

    A person makes his appearance as an historian, an artist, or an orator.

    David Beckham's first appearance with the LA Galaxy at Giants Stadium against the New York Red Bulls last night drew a crowd of 66237.

    Will he now retire, After appearance, and again prolong Our expectation?

  7. 7

    An instance of someone coming into a court of law to be part of a trial, lawsuit or other proceeding, either in person or represented by an attorney or such like; a court appearance

  8. 8

    Chiefly used by nurses: the act of defecation by a patient.

    The patient had a small bowel obstruction and there was no appearance until after the obstruction resolved.

Etymology

Borrowed from Middle French apparence, from Latin apparentia, from appareo. Morphologically appear + -ance. Doublet of apparence and apparency. Displaced native Old English hīew (“the way something looks or seems”) and ætīewednes (“act of appearing or coming into view”).

Forms

plural
appearances
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).