There is a difference, of course, between a 5-year-old who stumbles across a television show he doesn't understand and teen-agers who slavishly copy movie stunts.

And yet to slavishly copy it held complications.

Not wanting to slavishly copy nature, he strives to observe and create an interpretation consistent with reality and his personal experience.

There is a lot we can learn from them without having to copy slavishly.

At the same time, slavishly copying Japanese workplace customs is not appropriate either, he said.

The "slavishly copying" side of it hasn't been won or lost yet, but will carry on for a while.

"Somehow the Chinese are able to capture the essence of an animal without slavishly copying it," she said.

He does not just slavishly copy photographs of typewriters.

Creative writing students slavishly copied his short, cathartic, unfussy stories.

Remember those days when we slavishly copied everything Australian?