figura

Figura, figurae is first declension feminine, formed from fingo, "to shape, mould", so the root sense is something moulded rather than something merely seen. That separates it from forma, which is the shape a thing has, and from imago, which is a likeness of something else.

Two later senses dominate this corpus. In rhetoric a figura is a figure of speech, straight into English. In theology it is a type or foreshadowing, and in eucharistic writing sub figura panis, "under the form of bread", is standard vocabulary. French figure and Spanish figura carry the word on, and English gained figure, figment, feign, fiction and effigy from the same fingo family.