Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. The act of alluding; indirect reference: Without naming names, the candidate criticized the national leaders by allusion.
- n. An instance of indirect reference: an allusion to classical mythology in a poem. See Usage Note at allude.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A play upon words; a pun.
- n. A symbolical reference or comparison; a metaphor.
- n. A passing or casual reference; a slight or incidental mention of something, either directly or by implication; a hint or reference used by way of illustration, suggestion, or insinuation: as, a classical allusion; an allusion to a person's misconduct.
Wiktionary
- n. An indirect reference; a hint; a reference to something supposed to be known, but not explicitly mentioned; a covert indication.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. obsolete A figurative or symbolical reference.
- n. A reference to something supposed to be known, but not explicitly mentioned; a covert indication; indirect reference; a hint.
WordNet 3.0
- n. passing reference or indirect mention
Etymologies
- From Latin allūsiōnem, accusative singular of allūsiō ("the act of playing with"), from allūdō ("play with; allude"), from al-, combining form of ad ("to"), + lūdō ("play"): compare French allusion. (Wiktionary)
- Late Latin allūsiō, allūsiōn-, a playing with, from Latin allūsus, past participle of allūdere, to play with; see allude. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“The origin of the allusion is the myth of Philomel who, after her brother-in-law”
“Every thought that was devoted to it was an extreme anguish, and every word that I spoke in allusion to it caused my lips to quiver, and my heart to palpitate.”
“The new taxon is named Gamerabaena, and the authors note, under etymology, "'Gamera refers to the fictional, firebreathing turtle from the 1965 movie Gamera, in allusion to his fire-breathing capabilities and the Hell Creek Formation ...”
"Look at everything around us. Look at everything we've done."
“With sense 2 cf. French morion punishment inflicted on soldiers (1605), so called in allusion to the hat suspended at the end of the shaft of the halberd which held the soldier while the punishment was inflicted.”
“And there's what I'll call (in allusion to James Thomson's "Seasons") a "long ellipsis": three periods with spaces in between them to indicate when a sentence or more has been removed.”
“The audible allusion is to the passage that records the sudden eruption of joy at the top of stanza IX in the "Intimations" Ode, more specifically a few lines on, when the poet says that it is not for the”
The 'Power of Sound' and the Great Scheme of Things: Wordsworth Listens to Wordsworth
“The allusion is to that of a childlike state, in which faith is absolute and without contradiction.”
“Their Latinized names refer to their morphology: quinarius in allusion to the five well-marked dorsal crests, and squarrosus in reference to the stiff, erected scales of the entire body.”
“More common is, when the allusion is missed, the story loses its brilliance, its frission, sometimes it totally fails as a story.”
“Once the mystique of the allusion is taken away, the raw poem, chuck full of metaphors and similes and adjectives — oh, the wearying adjectives — becomes an ordinary thing and it will ask the question, “So what?””
The Hard Poem: A Sort of Fiction : Kwame Dawes : Harriet the Blog : The Poetry Foundation
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘allusion’.
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EN - fine scholarly language
exhort, accretion, twenty-nine, atrophy, additive, brilliantly, interreligious, empiricism, pathologic, limitless, half-century, vigilant and 488 more...
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gre2
aberrant, aberration, aboveboard, abrasive, abstemious, acme, admonish, affable, affluent, alacrity, allegory, alleviate and 1523 more...
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Terms for AP Lit
This list is designed to be a reference for my AP Lit. students
metonymy, synecdoche, metaphor, simile, litotes, satire, irony, sarcasm, invective, bathos, broadside, characterization and 28 more...
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5000 FREE SAT Words
abase, abbess, abbey, abbot, abdicate, abdomen, abdominal, abduction, abed, aberration, abet, abeyance and 229 more...
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Macbeth
ambivalence, prescient, omniscient, equivocation, soliloquy, discourse, antithesis, allusion, analogy, anthropomorphism, dramatic irony, juxtaposition and 18 more...
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The Sog Collection
My big word list.
chaos, flaccid, empirical, flotsam, cacophony, grumble, assuage, awe, romance, mortality, coalesce, fortuitous and 3282 more...
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SAT vocab
abash, abdicate, abate, aberration, abhor, abject, abnegate, abortive, absolve, abstruse, accolade, accost and 175 more...
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SAT Vocab
Redundant.
problematic, proclivity, prodigal, prodigious, prodigy, profane, profligate, profound, profusion, proliferation, prolific, prologue and 455 more...
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Wordplay
reticent, slammerkin, moonstruck, zephyr, gallivant, hullabaloo, pandemonium, equestrian, wallflower, martyr, threadbare, treacherous and 180 more...
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Vocab
Words that I come across, and go blank, or want to clarify.
nefarious, edifice, malevolent, ostensible, folderol, bauble, livid, amnesty, calculus, saddlery, maisonette, cuisse and 423 more...
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Necessary?
"Words are very..."
The above was the original description for this list. Unfortunately, it doesn't convey much about the list contents.
I'm leaving you to draw your own conclusions abo...supererogation, fruitcake, unbeknownst, melifluous, bane, cavy, unnecessary, lyrical, question, undertow, weapon, arduous and 200 more...
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Naresh_Gre
The path meanders through the vineyards
meander, labyrinth, Sinuous, gyrate, caron, awry, credo, banter, juxtaposition, argot, inexorable, foibles and 223 more...
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mandarine's Words
antepenultimate, metonymy, synecdoche, pop, kern, inherit, clique, scrumptious, macerate, murmur, kerning, veranda and 1068 more...
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Favorite Words of AWP13
We asked attendees who visited the Wordnik booth what their favorite words were, and these are what they told us. (AWP is an annual conference for writers and those in the writing world.)
cling, declivity, susurrus, caramel, cataract, please, fester, reverie, kerplunk!, defenestration, colonel, ocean and 174 more...
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my words
interminable, effete, convocation, philistines, malaise, foibles, deputation, anathematized, morass, stalwart, proselytize, abet and 405 more...
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AP Rhetorical Devices
asyndeton, aphorism, polysyndeton, characterize, antagonist, antihero, audience, diction, foil, mood, motif, protagonist and 153 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for allusion.
Kristianto2010 This caused developers to refer to the Internet as the wild, wild Web, an allusion to the days of the wild, wild West in the US when law and order were pretty much nonexistent. Dec 29, 2010
Kristianto2010 You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? James 4:4a is an allusion to covenant unfaithfulness. Dec 15, 2010
grant_barrett Often confused in writing with "illusion." Mar 26, 2009