Allusion definitions and example sentences on Wordnik

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Definitions (7)

noun The act of alluding; indirect reference: Without naming names, the candidate criticized the national leaders by allusion.
noun An instance of indirect reference: an allusion to classical mythology in a poem. See Usage Note at allude.

Throughout his intercourse with intimate friends there is that happy and frank play of direct personal allusion, which is as distinct from flattery when it is about another, as it is from egoism when it refers to the writer himself Perhaps we see him most characteristically in his correspondence with Turgot. — Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) Essay 3: Condorcet
Labadie died there Footnote 43: No doubt the allusion is to Antoinette Bourignon and her conventicles. — Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680
At this, laughing out again, Vereker laid his hand on my shoulder to show that the allusion was not to my personal appearance But you talk about the initiated. — Embarrassments
The prosperity" of an allusion, as of a jest, "lies in the ear of him that hears it," and it were doing a poor service to Lamb or his readers to draw out and arrange in order the threads he has wrought into the very fabric of his English Then Mr. Ainger's notes are not meddlesome notes, but truly explanatory ones, genuine aids to enjoyment. — Obiter Dicta Second Series
I wonder if the new religion teaches anything regarding thraldom Leif looked up quickly into his friend's face, but Karlsefin had turned his head aside as if in meditation, and no further allusion was made to that subject by either of them Do you think that Bertha returns Hake's love?" — The Norsemen in the West