simulation

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. The act or process of simulating.
2. n. An imitation; a sham.
3. n. Assumption of a false appearance.
4. n. Imitation or representation, as of a potential situation or in experimental testing.
5. n. Representation of the operation or features of one process or system through the use of another: computer simulation of an in-flight emergency.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. The act of simulating, or feigning or counterfeiting; the false assumption of a certain appearance or character; pretense, usually for the purpose of deceiving.
2. n. Specifically— In phonology, imitation in form; the alteration of the form of word so as to approach or agree with that of another word having some accidental similarity, and to suggest a connection between them: a tendency of popular etymology. Examples are frontispiece for frontispice (simulating piece), curtal-ax for cutlas (simulating ax), sovereign for soverain or *soveren (simulating reign), sparrowgrass for asparagus (simulating sparrow and grass), etc.
3. n. In biology, unconscious imitation or protective mimicry; assimilation in appearance.
4. n. Resemblance; similarity.
5. n. In French law, a fictitious engagement, contract, or conveyance, made eitner as a fraud where no real transaction is intended, or as a mask or cover for a different transaction, in which case it may sometimes be made in good faith and valid. Synonyms See dissemble.

Wiktionary

1. n. Something which simulates a system or environment in order to predict actual behaviour.
2. n. The process of simulating.
3. n. Assuming an appearance which is feigned, or not true.
4. n. soccer The act of falling over in order to be awarded a foul, when a foul hasn't been committed.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. The act of simulating, or assuming an appearance which is feigned, or not true; -- distinguished from dissimulation, which disguises or conceals what is true.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. the act of giving a false appearance
2. n. the act of imitating the behavior of some situation or some process by means of something suitably analogous (especially for the purpose of study or personnel training)
3. n. representation of something (sometimes on a smaller scale)
4. n. (computer science) the technique of representing the real world by a computer program