The state of appearing to be a ‘true’ likeness---the term is derived from Latin ‘verum’ meaning ‘truth’ and ‘similis’ meaning ‘like’. For example, the dust and grime on the robots and spaceships in the Star Wars cycle of films has the effect of making them seem ‘more real’, as it were, than if they were shiny and new like toys fresh out of their boxes. In this respect, verisimilitude is clearly the goal of the techniques Barthes, Roland analyses in his account of the reality-effect. It is often also used as a measure of the comparative achievement of works of either realism or naturalism (the greater the degree of verisimilitude the better the works). Verisimilitude might be regarded as the ultimate form of mimesis. In philosophy, verisimilitude is used to describe the degree to which a certain hypothesis approaches the truth; it was first used in this sense by Popper, Karl.