Other forms: semblances
A semblance is an outward appearance of something, perhaps false. A semblance of order, some semblance of normality, without a semblance of.
It almost always appears as a semblance of, and the phrase concedes that what follows is only the look of the thing. Restoring a semblance of normality is what people say when normality itself is out of reach.
1nounsemblanceAn outward appearance of something, perhaps false.
“He tried to keep a semblance of calm while the plane shook.”
semblance is an appearance.
Old French semblance comes from sembler, to seem, from Latin similare, to be like.
Proto-Indo-European
*sem-
Latin
similāre
Old French
semblance
Anglo-Norman
semblaunce
Middle English
semblaunce — outward appearance, form; appearance without reality; condition or fact of being apparent; symbolic image; facial expression, countenance; conduct, manner; image, likeness; analogy, comparison
English, today
semblance
Built from
From Middle English semblaunce (“outward appearance, form; appearance without reality; condition or fact of being apparent; symbolic image; facial expression, countenance; conduct, manner; image, likeness; analogy, comparison”), from Anglo-Norman semblaunce and Old French semblance (modern French semblance), from semblant, the of sembler (“to appear; to resemble, seem”), from Latin similāre, the present of similō, a variant of Latin simulō (“to act or behave as if; to imitate, simulate”), from similis (“like resembling, similar to”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European sem- (“one; together”)) + -ō. by surface analysis, semble + -ance.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA