allude

English

Etymology

From (deprecated template usage) [etyl] Middle French alluder, from (deprecated template usage) [etyl] Latin alludere (“to play with or allude”), from ad + ludere (“to play”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /əˈluːd/

• Audio (UK)

  (file)

Verb

1. (intransitive) To refer to something indirectly or by suggestion.
   • 1597, Richard Hooker, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, Book V, Chapter xxix.3, 1841 ed., page 523:

     These speeches . . . do seem to allude unto such ministerial garments as were then in use.

   • 1846, George Luxford, Edward Newman, The Phytologist: a popular botanical miscellany: Volume 2, Part 2, page 474

     It was aptly said by Newton that "whatever is not deduced from facts must be regarded as hypothesis," but hypothesis appears to us a title too honourable for the crude guessings to which we allude.

   • 2012 January, Robert L. Dorit, “Rereading Darwin”, in American Scientist‎^[1], volume 100, number 1, page 23:

     We live our lives in three dimensions for our threescore and ten allotted years. Yet every branch of contemporary science, from statistics to cosmology, alludes to processes that operate on scales outside of human experience: the millisecond and the nanometer, the eon and the light-year.

Synonyms

• See also Thesaurus:allude

Derived terms

• allusive
• allusion

Related terms

• delude
• elude
• illude

Translations

refer to something indirectly or by suggestion

• Bulgarian: споменавам (bg) (spomenavam), загатвам (bg) (zagatvam)
• Catalan: al·ludir (ca)
• Czech: dělat narážky, narážet
• Finnish: viitata (fi), vihjata
• French: alluder (fr), faire allusion (fr), suggérer (fr)
• German: andeuten (de), erwähnen (de)
• Interlingue:
• Irish: ailléidigh (literary)
• Italian: alludere (it)
• Japanese: 遠回しに触れる (tōmawashi ni fureru) (neutrally), 当て擦る (atekosuru) (maliciously), 当て付ける (atetsukeru) (maliciously), 嫌味を言う (iyami o iu) (maliciously)
• Occitan: alludir
• (deprecated template usage) {{trans-mid}}
• Persian: اشاره کردن (fa) (ešâre kardan)
• Polish: pić (pl) (+ do kogo, maliciously), przymawiać (+ dative, maliciously)
• Portuguese: aludir (pt)
• Romanian: face aluzie, referi (ro)
• Russian: намека́ть (ru) impf (namekátʹ), намекну́ть (ru) pf (nameknútʹ); упомина́ть (ru) impf (upominátʹ), упомяну́ть (ru) pf (upomjanútʹ), подразумевать (ru) impf (podrazumevatʹ)
• Scottish Gaelic: luaidh
• Serbo-Croatian: aludirati (sh)
• Spanish: aludir (es), referirse (es)
• Swedish: anspela (sv)

References

• “allude”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• Douglas Harper (2001–2024) “allude”, in Online Etymology Dictionary.

See also

• hark back
• hearken back

Anagrams

• aludel

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Italian

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /alˈlu.de/
• Rhymes: -ude

Verb

allude

1. third-person singular present indicative of alludere

Anagrams

• duella

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Latin

Pronunciation

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /alˈluː.de/, [älˈlʲuːd̪ɛ]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /alˈlu.de/, [älˈluːd̪e]

Verb

(deprecated template usage) allūde

1. second-person singular present active imperative of allūdō