trompe l'oeil
Definition from Wiktionary, the free dictionary
Contents
English[edit]
Alternative forms[edit]
Etymology[edit]
From the French trompe-l’œil (“trompe l’oeil”, literally “deceives the eye”), from trompe (“deceives”, the third-person singular indicative simple present form of tromper, “to deceive”) + l’ (“t’”, the prevocalic form of le, “the”) + œil (“eye”).
Pronunciation[edit]
- (Received Pronunciation) enPR: tʀôɴp löy, IPA(key): /tʁɔ̃p lœj/
Noun[edit]
trompe l'oeil (usually uncountable, plural trompe l'oeil or trompe l'oeils) (see usage notes)
- (uncountable) A genre of still life painting that exploits human vision to create the illusion that the subject of the painting is real.
- (countable) A painting of this kind.
Usage notes[edit]
- This phrase is sometimes misconstructed as trompe d’œil and trompe-d’œil, which, literally interpreted in French, means “deceives of eye”.
- In French, trompe-l’œil is an invariant noun; the same usage is reflected in the plural use of the English trompe l’oeil. Alternatively, trompe l’oeil is treated as a headless noun phrase, to which is suffixed -s to form a regular plural form. Still otherwise, some authors form novel plurals on modified etymological bases, such as the technically correct trompent-l’œil (“[they] deceive the eye”) and the ultimately mistaken trompe les yeux (“deceives the eyes”); however, such neologistic constructions are vanishingly rare.
Synonyms[edit]
Translations[edit]
genre of still life painting
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painting of this kind
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See also[edit]
Trompe-l'œil on Wikipedia.Wikipedia:Trompe-l'œil
References[edit]
- “‖trompe l’œil” listed in the Oxford English Dictionary [2nd Ed.; 1989]
