allusion

allude, allusion

1. To allude to someone or something is to mention them ‘indirectly or covertly’, i.e. without mentioning their name, unlike refer, which means to mention them directly, i.e. by name. So if you refer to Julius Caesar you name him, whereas if you allude to him you identify him without naming him, e.g. ‘the Roman dictator assassinated in 44 bc’. In practice, allude is often used to mean ‘refer’ (e.g.

• He had star quality, an element often alluded to in Arlene's circle of show-biz friends —Gore Vidal, 1978

• She tabled a letter alluding to fraud that caused alarm amongst her fellow councillors —AusE source, 2003 [OEC]).

2. Allusion and reference should follow the same principle, allusion involving indirect mention and reference involving direct mention by name, but again in practice the distinction blurs at the edges

• (She came across allusions to her family in the papers —Vita Sackville-West, 1931

• Midway in the questioning…he'd begun to notice the number of allusions to a particular November weekend —Truman Capote, 1966

• There were hints and allusions about his troubles to his friends —D. Halberstam, 1979

• She was…annoyed that he could make her feel so uncomfortable by his veiled allusion to last night —A. Murray, 1993.

3. Beware of confusion between allusion and illusion, which means ‘a deception or misapprehension about the true state of affairs’.