allude

English

Etymology

From Middle French alluder, from Latin alludere (“to play with or allude”), from ad + ludere (“to play”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /əˈluːd/

• Audio (UK):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -uːd
• Homophones: elude, illude (weak vowel merger)

Verb

allude (third-person singular simple present alludes, present participle alluding, simple past and past participle alluded)

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, archived from the original on 14 November 2012, 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

• allusion
• allusive
• reallude

 

Related terms

• collude
• delude
• elude
• illude

Translations

refer to something indirectly or by suggestion

• Belarusian: намякаць impf (namjakacʹ), намякну́ць pf (namjaknúcʹ)
• Bulgarian: споменавам (bg) (spomenavam), загатвам (bg) (zagatvam)
• Catalan: al·ludir (ca)
• Czech: dělat narážky, narážet (cs)
• Dutch: toespelen (nl), zinspelen (nl), alluderen (nl)
• Esperanto: aludi (eo)
• Finnish: viitata (fi), vihjata (fi)
• French: alluder (fr), faire allusion (fr), suggérer (fr)
• German: andeuten (de), erwähnen (de), anspielen (de)
• Greek: υπαινίσσομαι (el) (ypainíssomai), υπονοώ (el) (yponoó), συστήνω (el) (systíno), συνιστώ (el) (synistó)
• Irish: tagair do, 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 (oc)
• 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), alludera (sv)
• Ukrainian: натякати (natjakaty), посилатися (posylatysja)

See also

• hark back
• hearken back

References

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

Anagrams

• aludel

Italian

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /alˈlu.de/
• Rhymes: -ude
• Hyphenation: al‧lù‧de

Verb

allude

1. third-person singular present indicative of alludere

Anagrams

• duella

Latin

Pronunciation

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

Verb

allūde

1. second-person singular present active imperative of allūdō