Other forms: appearances
Somebody's appearance is how they look. Neat in appearance, judge by appearance, change your appearance.
The second sense is an arrival or a showing up: make an appearance, a court appearance, his first appearance on stage. That one is countable and very common in reporting sport and law. Appearances in the plural means how things seem rather than are: appearances can be deceptive, keep up appearances. Note to all appearances, meaning as far as anybody can tell, and put in an appearance, meaning to attend briefly out of duty.
1nounappearanceHow somebody or something looks.
“The building's appearance has not changed in a century.”
2nounarrivalAn arrival or a showing up.
“It was his first appearance in court in twenty years.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
appearance is how something looks or shows up.
Latin apparere is ad-, to, plus parere, to come into view. Appear, apparent and apparition all descend from it, and the word has always covered both looking and showing up — which is why English never split it into two.
Latin
apparentia
Middle French
apparence
English, today
appearance
Built from
Middle French apparence, from Latin apparentia, from appareo. Morphologically appear + ance. a doublet of apparence and apparency. Displaced native hīew and ætīewednes (“act of appearing or coming into view”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA