skeuomorph

English

Etymology

From Ancient Greek σκεῦος (skeûos, “implement, tool, vessel”) + μορφή (morphḗ, “form”), modeled after zoomorph (“resembling an animal”) and phyllomorph (“resembling a plant”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈskjuːəmɔɹf/ enPR: skyo͞oʹə-môrf

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

Noun

skeuomorph (plural skeuomorphs)

1. A design feature copied from a similar feature in another object, even when not functionally necessary. [from 1889]
   • 1889, Henry Colley March, “The Meaning of Ornament; or its Archæology and its Psychology”, in Transactions of the Lancashire and Chesire Antiquarian Society, volume 7, page 166:

     As soon as man began to make things, to fasten a handle to a stone implement, to construct a wattled roof, to weave a mat, skeuomorphs became an inseparable part of his brain, and ultimately occasioned a mental craving or expectancy.

   • 1987, Alexander von Gernet, Peter Timmins, Pipes and Parakeets: Constructing Meaning in an Early Iroquoian Context, Ian Hodder, Archaeology As Long-Term History, page 37,

     One of the most striking examples of a skeuomorph is the aforementioned impaled bird motif which has the stem of a pipe thrust through the body of a duck or other bird, so that the mouthpiece protrudes from the bill.

   • 2000, "skeuomorph", entry in Barbara Ann Kipfer, Encyclopedic Dictionary of Archaeology, page 519,

     A decorative bow attached to a shoe is a skeuomorph of the laces once used to tie it; triangular shapes drawn below handles on pottery are skeuomorphs of the metal plates by which the handles on metal prototypes were attached; and the semicircular mark on the back of a teaspoon represents the broadening of the handle where it was soldered to the bowl when it used to be made in two pieces.

   • 2005, Alice A. Donohue, Greek Sculpture and the Problem of Description, page 81:

     Such skeuomorphs can be used to reconstruct ephemeral artifacts that cannot be recovered archaeologically. Understood in this way, the skeuomorph functions to extend the archaeological record.

   • 2007 April 6, Jennifer Viegas, “Stonehenge Amulets Worn by Elite”, in Discovery News:

     While working two months ago in South Lowestoft, Suffolk, British archaeologist Clare Good excavated a four-sided object made of the mineral jet. It closely matches a geometrically designed gold object found far away at a burial site called Bush Barrow near Stonehenge in Wiltshire. The match is so close that experts believe the black artifact is a skeuomorph, or a copy in a different material.

Synonyms

• skiamorph

Derived terms

• skeuomorphic
• skeuomorphism

Translations

design feature

• Finnish: skeuomorfi (fi)

Further reading

• skeuomorph on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• “skeuomorph”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.