allusion
noun
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What is the word origin of allusion?
An allusion is not a play on words—that would be a pun—but allusion does come from the Latin verb allūdere, which in turn combines the verb lūdere, meaning “play,” with the prefix ad-, which can mean “to,” “toward,” or “near.” One way of thinking about an allusion—an indirect reference, especially (though not exclusively) as used in literature—is that it “plays toward or around” something rather than naming it directly. For example, Picnic, Lightning, the title of a book by poet Billy Collins, is an allusion to a line from Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Lolita. This allusion—like most—works on the assumption that there is a body of knowledge shared by the author and reader and that therefore the reader will understand the reference. Don’t be misled by the similar pronunciation and spelling of allusion and illusion, however. You wouldn’t be the first, but the latter—which also comes from lūdere—refers to something that is visually or otherwise misleading.
Did you know?
Allusion and Illusion
Allusion and illusion may share some portion of their ancestry (both words come in part from the Latin word ludere, meaning “to play”), and sound quite similar, but they are distinct words with very different meanings. An allusion is an indirect reference, whereas an illusion is something that is unreal or incorrect. Each of the nouns has a related verb form: allude “to refer indirectly to,” and illude (not a very common word), which may mean “to delude or deceive” or “to subject to an illusion.”
Examples of allusion in a Sentence
Tony Tanner, New York Times Book Review, 6 Apr. 1997
So while the former engineering professor with an IQ reportedly tipping 180 enjoys bombarding his staff with math wizardry, scientific jargon and computerese, he also drops frequent allusions to his baseball card and stamp collections …
—Maureen Dowd, New York Times Magazine, 16 Sept. 1990
To my ear this is a beautiful reenactment of the prose of the antebellum South, with its careful grammar, its stately cadences, and its classical allusions and quotations.
—Cleanth Brooks, The Language of the American South, 1985
The lyrics contain biblical allusions.
She made allusion to her first marriage.
Amy Nicholson, Los Angeles Times, 2 Feb. 2025
With his ample, erroneous allusions to scholarship and appeals to authority, Kennedy has perfected the art of the Gish Gallop: a debate strategy in which the speaker simply overwhelms the listener with information, not all of it true.
—Benjamin Mazer, The Atlantic, 27 Jan. 2025
Now McCrae follows the journey of a poet and his guide through Hell’s landscape, in a clear allusion to Dante and his Inferno.
—Elisa Gonzalez, The New Yorker, 3 Feb. 2025
Yet for anyone who’s been paying attention to Ferreira’s career over the past decade, there are a few ways to interpret the song’s allusions to feeling trapped—and finally breaking free.
—Keaton Bell, Vogue, 2 Dec. 2024
See All Example Sentences for allusion
Cite this Entry
“Allusion.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/allusion. Accessed 3 Mar. 2025.
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allusion
noun
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