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Appearance vs Look vs Aspect vs Semblance

Appearance, look, aspect and semblance denote the outward show presented by a person or thing.

Appearance often carries no additional implications.

  • judge not according to the appearance
    Jn 7:24
  • in drawing, represent the appearances of things, never what you know the things to be
    —Ruskin

The word, however, frequently implies an apparent as opposed to an actual or genuine character and therefore often connotes hypocrisy, dissembling, or pretense when used of persons or their actions.

  • to be able to tyrannize effectively they needed the title and appearance of constitutional authority
    Huxley
  • they spent their lives trying to keep up appearances, and to make his salary do more than it could
    —Cat her

Look is often indistinguishable from appearance except that it more often occurs in the plural.

  • never judge a thing merely by its looks

They are not interchangeable, however, in all instances. When a personal impression or a judgment is implied, appearance is the precise word.

  • Aristotle . . . while admitting that Plato’s scheme has a plausible appearance of philanthropy, maintains that it is inapplicable to the facts of human nature
    Dickinson

When the emphasis is upon concrete details (as of color, shape, or expression) observable to everybody, look is a better choice.

  • he had the look of a man who works indoors and takes little exercise
  • I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects
    Wilde

Specifically look is often applied to a person’s expression as manifest in his face or posture.

  • she had a look about her that I wish I could forget—the look of a scared thing sitting in a net!
    M May

Aspect, like look, stresses the features of a person or thing but when applied to persons, it usually distinctively suggests the characteristic or habitual appearance and expression, especially facial expression.

  • not risking a landing because of the fierce aspect of the natives
    Heiser
  • he was a very handsome man, of a commanding aspect
    Austen

Aspect often specifically implies reference to a facet or to the features that give something (as a place, an age, or a situation) its peculiar or distinctive character.

  • the aspect of affairs was very alarming
    Dickens
  • fifty years from now, it may be, the olive tree will almost have disappeared from southern France, and Provence will wear another aspect
    —Huxley
  • democracy . . . has different aspects in different lands
    Sulzberger

Semblance basically implies outward seeming without necessarily suggesting a false appearance.

  • it is the semblance which interests the painter, not the actual object
    Times Lit. Sup.

Nevertheless it is rarely used in this sense without an expressed or implied contrast between the outward appearance and the inner reality.

  • thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie thy soul’s immensity
    Wordsworth

Sometimes, however, the word stresses the likeness of the thing to something else without suggesting deceptiveness in the appearance.

  • a piked road that even then had begun to take on the semblance of a street
    Anderson