Good point and misused vs. something simliar or equal: Defined:

a copy without an original. An example might be Disneyland's ‘Main Street', which represents an ideal American high street, but is not modelled on an original.

an insubstantial or vague semblance

effigy: a representation of a person (especially in the form of sculpture); "the coin bears an effigy of Lincoln"; "the emperor's tomb had his image carved in stone"

Simulacrum is a Latin word originally meaning a material object representing something (such as an idol representing a deity, or a painted still-life of a bowl of fruit). By the 1800s it developed a sense of a "mere" image, an empty form devoid of spirit, and descended to a specious or fallow representation.