means A visual likeness or representation of something — a picture, a reflection, a mental picture, or the impression a person or thing projects to the world.

from From Latin 'imago,' meaning a copy, likeness, or ghostly apparition — the Romans even used 'imagines' for the wax ancestral masks paraded at funerals. It traveled through Old French 'image' into English. The same Latin root gives us 'imagine,' which makes sense: both are about conjuring a likeness, one in wax or pigment, the other in the mind.