FromLatinallūs-, past participle stem ofallūdere (“to joke, jest”; seeallude) +-ive.[1]
allusive (comparativemoreallusive,superlativemostallusive)
- thatcontains or makes use ofallusions (indirectreferences orhints)
1984, John Bayley,Two pieces on translating Mandelstam: Selected Essays,page149:English poetry is compelled by the stubbornness of the language continually to renounce the too obviously poetic: but in seeking to be more precise, more dense and moreallusive, Russian poetry has never had to give up the straightforward traditional intoxications of sound and rhyme.
2010, James Matthews, “Late Modernism and the Marketplace”, in Edwina Keown, Carol Taaffe, editors,Irish Modernism,page172:The footnotes ensure that the lines becomemoreallusive andmore polysemantic, vacillating between transubstantiation and ghostly intimations.
- 2013, Nick Nicholas, George Baloglou (translators and editors),Introduction, Unknown author,An Entertaining Tale of Quadrupeds, [14th c,Παιδιόφραστος διήγησις τῶν ζῴων τῶν τετραπόδων],page 87,
- TheBook is a moreallusive work than theTale, which leads to speculation on whether the digressions in both works might not merely be a case of a rambling narrator.
2023,Brandon Taylor, chapter 1, inThe Late Americans, pages1-2:Around they go, taking in the poem'sallusive system of images and its narrative density, the emotional heat of its subject matter, its increasing cultural salience re: women, re: trauma, re: bodies, re: life at the end of the world.
- Synonym:suggestive
containing or making use of allusions
allusive
- femininesingular ofallusif
allusive
- feminineplural ofallusivo
