Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Symbolically; by way of comparison or figure.
  • In an allusive manner; by way of allusion; by suggestion, implication, or insinuation.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adverb Figuratively [Obs.]; by way of allusion; by implication, suggestion, or insinuation.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adverb In an allusive manner; in a manner characterized by allusion.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

allusive +‎ -ly

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Examples

  • Taking an unexpected hand in the fortunes of cinematic renegades, the French designer agnès b. aka Agnès Andrée Marguerite Troublé has given financial backing to such bold and divisive filmmakers as Harmony Korine and Gaspar Noé, and conceived the allusively chic attire worn by Uma Thurman and John Travolta in "Pulp Fiction."

    Bidding a Very Long Farewell to Hungary's Film Hero Steve Dollar 2012

  • If so, the euphony is, for Conrad, not just thoroughly but almost allusively Romantic.

    Phonemanography: Romantic to Victorian 2008

  • His poetry gives evidence of a bookish and extremely thoughtful life while encountering the forms and rituals of cultures without literatures — West African, Mexican and Central American — as well as the writers — Augustine, Goethe, Rilke, David Hume, Hugh MacDiarmid — whose traces we find allusively placed throughout his work.

    A mess of errors : Stephen Burt : Harriet the Blog : The Poetry Foundation 2007

  • Ackerman declines to discuss her own emotional resume, but does say airily, "I was born with a poet's sensibility, and Prozac made it impossible for me to do what comes naturally -- think metaphorically, allusively, exploring the hidden connection between seemingly unrelated things."

    Book Marks 2008

  • Life stories, in other words, are not intended for indiscriminate public consumption, nor would they be immediately comprehensible beyond a narrator's social circle, given their often-unnamed cast of characters and the situations they allusively describe.

    Where Women Make History: Gendered Tellings of Community and Change in Magude, Mozambique 2005

  • In a tentative way information was supplied; she spoke allusively of her school, of her examination successes, of her gladness that the days of “Cram” were over.

    Twelve Stories and a Dream, by H. G. Wells Herbert George 2006

  • There's something allusively pornographic about the role of delivery guy.

    Archive 2006-01-01 Ann Althouse 2006

  • Vaughn Bode himself is allusively depicted on page forty-three, and I think he would be proud to find himself in these colorful funny pages.

    Asimov's Science Fiction 2005

  • Irvine's previous novel, A Scattering of Jades, combined Mammoth Cave, Aaron Burr, and P.T. Barnum with Aztec mummies and the Millerite apocalypse; it felt heftier than OKOS does, and its magic captured the True Powers Feel of "I know how this works, but if I told you straight out your eyes would melt, so I'm just going to describe it allusively" somewhat better.

    Kenneth Hite's Journal princeofcairo 2004

  • Every phrase had to be understood allusively rather than at face value, based on the assumption that all readers had read and memorized the same 30-volume library.

    languagehat.com: WRITTEN VERNACULARS IN ASIA. 2004

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