illude
verbUS /ɪˈluːd/ · UK /ɪˈluːd/
Etymology From Latin illūdō.
1
Literary To give a false impression to.
- The fleshly children of Adam bee so politicke, subtil, craftie, and wise, in theyre kynde, that the electe should be illuded if it were possible:1547, Catherine Parr, The Lamentation of a Sinner,:
- Tis now but wicked vanity to thinke, To color vitious deeds with good pretence, Or with bought colors to illude mens sense.1611, John Donne, An Anatomy of the World, London: Samuel Macham:
3 more examples
- The lines and shapes of mountains (features strongly marked) are easily caught and retained: but these meteor-forms, this rich fluctuation of airy hues, offer such a profusion of variegated splendor, that they are continually illuding the eye with breaking into each other; and are lost, as it endeavours to retain them.1786, William Gilpin, Observations, Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty, Made in the Year 1772, London: R. Blamire, Vol. 1, Section 6, p. 86:
- His [Jonathan Swift’s] versatile pen was prolific […] of fiction erected of impossible materials, and yet so creating and peopling a world of fancy as to illude the reader into temporary belief in its truth.1873, Henry Coppée, chapter 26, in English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History, Philadelphia: Claxton, Remsen & Haffelfinger, page 269:
- I had a sudden sense of mismatch, of profound incongruity—between what I imagined I felt and what I actually saw, between what I had thought and what I now found. I felt, for a dizzying, vertiginous moment, that I had been profoundly deceived, illuded, by my senses: an illusion—such an illusion—as I had never before known.1984, Oliver Sacks, chapter 2, in A Leg to Stand On, New York: Summit Books, page 69:
- Derived terms
- unilluded