semblant

plural semblants · alternative obsolete semblaunt

1. obsoleteOne's outward appearance.

   But vnder simple shew and semblant plaine / Lurckt false Duessa secretly vnseene […]

   1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto I”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC

comparative more semblant · superlative most semblant · alternative obsolete semblaunt

1. obsoleteLike; resembling.

   their eyes survey The semblant shade

   1709, Mat[thew] Prior, “An Epistle during the Queen's Picture”, in Poems on Several Occasions, London: […] Jacob Tonson […], →OCLC

2. Seeming, rather than real; apparent.

   [C]ommands ... that there be a just real union [of Scotland and England] as of brother and brother, not a false and merely semblant one as of slave and master.

   1843 April, Thomas Carlyle, Past and Present, American edition, Boston, Mass.: Charles C[offin] Little and James Brown, published 1843, →OCLC, (please specify |book=I or IV, or the page)