modelé

from the popular Latin modellus, variant of the classical Latin modulus, diminutive of modus ("manner" or "mode"). The word "model" would be a loan from the Italian modello of the 16th century. It was then used in the sense of a miniature representation of what will be built on a large scale (in the sense of "scale model" or "prototype"). Over the following centuries, it has taken on the meaning of "reference object", then "ideal to imitate". The technical-scientific use of the term would date only from the 1950s, but we find its use in Paul Valéry (1894) in his "Introduction to the Method of Leonardo da Vinci".