Meaning & use
emulate
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Meanings
verbtransitive
To copy someone you admire, trying to be as good as them or even better.
Grammar: Takes an object: emulate a role model.
Patterns
- emulate someone
- emulate someone's success
Young players try to emulate their heroes.
She hoped to emulate her mother's career in medicine.
Many cities want to emulate the success of the tech hub.
verbtransitivecomputing
To make a computer or device work like a different system so that it can run that system's programs.
Grammar: Takes an object: emulate a console.
Patterns
- emulate a system
This software can emulate an old game console.
The program emulates a different operating system inside a window.
Word forms
| third person singular | emulates |
|---|---|
| past tense | emulated |
| past participle | emulated |
| -ing form | emulating |
Common combinations
- emulate a role model
- He tried to emulate his role model.
- emulate success
- Others hope to emulate her success.
- hard to emulate
- His style is hard to emulate.
- emulate a console
- The app can emulate a vintage console.
Synonyms and how they differ
Word family
- emulation noun
- the act of emulating
- emulator noun
- software or hardware that emulates another system
Commonly confused: emulate or simulate?
emulate vs simulate
Simulate means to recreate conditions or a process for testing or training; emulate copies someone's achievements or another system's function.
Practice
The young chef wanted to ___ the great cooks she admired and eventually become as skilled as they were.
Choose one answer.
Emulate means to copy out of admiration while aiming to equal. Ridicule and avoid mean the opposite, and 'imitate poorly' is not a verb.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “emulate”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.