trompe l'oeil

See also: trompe-l'oeil, trompe l'œil, and trompe-l'œil

English

WOTD – 15 May 2011

Alternative forms

Trompe l'oeil of a portrait subject escaping his frame.

• trompe l’œil, trompe-l’oeil, trompe-l’œil

Etymology

Borrowed from French trompe-l’œil (literally “deceives the eye”), from trompe (“deceives”, third-person singular present indicative of tromper) + l’ (“the”, prevocalic form of le) + œil (“eye”).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) (emulating French) enPR: trôɴp löy, IPA^(key): /ˈtɹɔ̃p ˈlœj/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈtɹɔmp ˈlɔɪ/, /-ˈleɪ/

Noun

trompe l’oeil (usually uncountable, plural trompe l’oeil or trompe l’oeils) (see usage notes)

1. (uncountable) A genre of painting that exploits human vision to create the illusion that the subject of the painting is real.
   • 1976 September, Saul Bellow, Humboldt’s Gift, New York, N.Y.: Avon Books, →ISBN, page 74:

     It looked like a private apartment, and yet it seemed also to be a place of business. It was furnished in decorative style with plastic, trick art objects hanging on the walls, geometrical forms of the trompe l'oeil type that intrigue business people. They are peculiarly vulnerable to art racketeers.

   • 2023 March 16, Julia Felsenthal, “An Artist Whose Work Might (Possibly) Have Its Own Free Will”, in The New York Times Style Magazine‎^[1]:

     In 2008 they moved to New York, where they made waves at the 2010 Whitney Biennial with their “Fold” paintings, spray-painted canvases that were flat but seemed crumpled, a trompe l’oeil trick that reflected the artist’s enduring preoccupation with interdimensionality.

2. (countable) A painting of this kind.

Usage notes

• 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

• quodlibet

Translations

genre of still life painting

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 錯視畫法 / 错视画法

• Finnish: trompe-l’œil
• French: trompe-l’œil (fr)
• Italian: trompe l'oeil m, inganna l'occhio f
• Polish: trompe l’oeil m
• Russian: тромплей m (tromplej), опти́ческая иллю́зия (ru) (optíčeskaja illjúzija), обма́н зре́ния (obmán zrénija)
• Spanish: trampantojo (es) m

painting of this kind

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 錯視畫 / 错视画

• Finnish: trompe-l’œil, optinen illuusio
• French: trompe-l’œil (fr)
• Italian: trompe l'oeil m, inganna l'occhio f
• Polish: trompe l’oeil m
• Russian: тромплей m (tromplej)

See also

• Trompe-l'œil on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

References

• “‖trompe l’œil” listed in the Oxford English Dictionary [2nd Ed.; 1989]

French

Noun

trompe l’oeil m (plural trompe l’oeil)

1. Nonstandard spelling of trompe-l’œil.

Usage notes

• The œ ligature is often replaced in contemporary French with oe (the œ character does not appear on AZERTY keyboards), but this is nonstandard.

Italian

Etymology

Unadapted borrowing from French trompe-l’œil (literally “deceive the eye”).

Noun

trompe l'oeil m (invariable)

1. trompe l'oeil