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One voice restating the melodic shape just heard in another, at the same or a different pitch.
Imitation binds independent lines into one argument: a motive stated in one voice and answered in another tells the listener the voices belong together. Bring the answer in while the first voice continues, so the original line turns into a countermelody, and vary the interval (octave, fifth, fourth) and the time gap to control how close the echo feels. Strict, continuous imitation becomes canon; a subject answered at the fifth, with tonal adjustments, is the start of a fugal exposition.
Imitation is one of 1755 terms in the Gradus musical dictionary: the words, abbreviations and instrument names that appear in printed scores, plus the vocabulary composers use to talk about them.
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