modelé

from Vulgar Latin modellus, variant of classical Latin modulus, diminutive of modus ("manner" or "mode"). The word "model" would be a loanword from Italian modello in 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"). It has taken on the meaning of "reference object" and then of "ideal to imitate" in the following centuries. The techno-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".