WORD OF THE DAY -SKEUOMORPH

Skeuomorph \SKYOO-uh-mawrf\, noun:  from Dictionary.com

an ornament or design on an object copied from a form of the object when made from another material or by other techniques, as an imitation metal rivet mark found on handles of prehistoric pottery.

Skeuomorphs exist to make the population feel comfortable and assured of some cultural continuity — in architecture, a typical skeuomorph is a pseudo “Tudor” styled house in a suburban development.

-- Bruce Sterling, "Web Semantics," Wired, February 10, 2011


Such an object, in archaeological parlance, is a skeuomorph, a classic manifestation of technology as it leaves behind the realm of natural things.

-- Timothy Taylor, The Artificial Ape, 2010

Skeuomorph is a neologism that was invented in the late 1800s from the Greek roots skeû meaning "vessel, implement" andmorph meaning "of the kind specified by the initial element."